


on the line.

by milominderbinder



Category: Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare, Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hockey, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Biologist Izzy, Coming Out, Fake/PR Relationship, Getting Together, Goalie Luke, Hockey Player Alec, Hockey Player Jace, Hockey Player Lydia, Homophobia in Professional Sports, M/M, Magnus is Instagram Famous, Magnus runs a vintage store, New Year's Eve, Secret Relationship, Shadowhunters Big Bang, Supportive Izzy, Valentine's Day, artist Clary
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-14
Updated: 2016-08-04
Packaged: 2018-07-24 01:24:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7487922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/milominderbinder/pseuds/milominderbinder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the eyes of the public, or at least the hockey-loving public, Alec Lightwood has it all.  He’s one of the best D-men in the NHL, the New York Blades are getting closer to the Stanley Cup with every passing day, and he’s dating the NWHL’s darling, Lydia Branwell.  Of course, behind closed doors, things are a little different.  He lives for his job, and Lydia is a more understanding friend than he ever could have hoped for, but Alec is forced so deep into the closet that he’s never even had a real chance at love.</p><p>Until one day he wanders into an unusual shop trying to buy something for his sister, and crosses paths with its owner.  Magnus Bane knows nothing about hockey, has never heard of Alec, and is nothing like anyone Alec’s ever met before.  Which might be just the thing to change Alec’s life forever.</p><p><i>Nine months in the life of Alec Lightwood</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One: October

**Author's Note:**

> so here it is, my contribution to the [shadowhunters big bang](http://shadowhunters-big-bang.tumblr.com)!! i am so excited to be able to share this project with you guys at last. some notes:
> 
> \- most importantly, don't worry if you don't know anything about hockey! there's not much technical talk and this is really completely focused on alec and magnus falling in love and how alec deals with being closeted and working towards coming out as a famous professional athlete
> 
> \- amazing graphics have been done for this story by the lovely livingbetweenthetimes [here!](http://livingbetweenthetimes.tumblr.com/post/147421183136/fic-on-the-line-author-milominderbinder-info)
> 
> \- there will be nine chapters, each containing scenes from a month in alec's life, and i'll be posting one chapter a day so as not to overwhelm you all at once. this should be done posting in nine days, as everything is already written and only needs to be edited before i upload each chap
> 
> \- a disclaimer that i am not a professional hockey player, and i do not live in new york, and i've never even been to america, and while i love hockey and have done as much research as possible into how professional teams work, there are prolly parts of this that won't be totally accurate. let's agree to handwave them O:) oh, the beauty of fiction~
> 
> \- this first chapter is the shortest one by far. i expect the final fic to be around the 40k word mark, eek!
> 
> okay, without further ado i hope you all enjoy! <3

“-- And while the ref sorts this out, Joe, let’s talk about how the Blades are looking as this season begins.”

“Frankly, we could sit here and talk as long as we like about any holes they might have in their offensive lines, but at the end of the day it wouldn’t matter, because the Blades are playing a defensive game and it’s certainly working for them.”

“There’s no arguing with that, Joe -- last year we saw them record more shutouts than any other team in the league, and with two minutes left on the clock it looks like they could be starting out this season with one, too.”

“Not to jinx it, Garroway’s a seasoned goaltender for this team and they certainly have him to thank, but you have to give a lot of credit to Lightwood and Wayland, arguably the best pair of D-men in the league at the moment.  Last season Lightwood was the second most point-scoring defenceman in the league, and their on-ice communication is just -- oh, play is resuming.”

“And the game’s immediately back in the Blades’ hands, to nobody’s surprise after how they’ve played the first two periods.  Brown takes the puck, passes straight to Wayland, Wayland no-looks it to Lightwood, exactly what you were just saying about their awareness of each other --”

“-- and Lightwood’s down the ice --”

“-- he’s over the line, Floret tries to intercept but Lightwood weaves the puck through his legs, passes to himself --”

“--  _ GOALLLL _ !”

“From barely over the line to right through the five hole, there’s that famous snap shot he’s so known for -- and just listen to this crowd go crazy!”

“With just three seconds left on the clock, Lightwood turns the game four-zero for the New York Blades!  If that doesn’t sum up everything we were just talking about, I don’t know what does.”

“What a way to start the season!  They have _got_ to be happy with that.”

\-----

Alec isn’t happy.

He knows he should be, of course he does, but he’s never really happy after a game.  Even when they win the euphoria wears off by the time they get back to the locker room, and from there all he can think of is what he should have done better, when he should have been quicker, who he should have passed to, what he needs to work harder at for next time.  They’ve won their first game of the season 4-0 and he even got a goal and he still doesn’t really feel satisfied.

“I should have passed to Raj in the second period,” he mutters, half to Jace and half to himself, as they change out of their gear.  Jace is like every other guy on the team, thrilled and ready to celebrate through his exhaustion.  “He was closer, he would have made that shot.”

“Would you lighten up?”  Jace is looking at him like he’s crazy, as always.  “Are you seriously upset by the difference between winning by four and winning by five?  Dude, we killed today, just enjoy it.”

He slaps Alec on the shoulder, and before Alec can say anything else, one of the team assistants rushes in and announces that they’re ready for press.

\-----

There’s never usually this much press after regular season games, especially not so early on, but there’s a lot of attention on the Blades right now.  They’re one of the newest expansion teams, only a decade old, and haven’t even been in the playoffs for five years -- the year before Alec was signed, and they’d gone out in the first round then anyway.  Last year they only missed the playoffs by a hair, though, and after a run of good luck with trades and a great draft pick, the team’s practically an unrecognisable force now.  In the last two weeks they’ve turned some heads by somehow winning every single one of their pre-season games.  It’s too early to call anything, of course, but a lot of people seem to be pegging them as serious contenders for the cup this year, for the first time ever.

It’s unfortunate.  Not the team’s progress -- Alec couldn’t be more pleased about that -- but the fact that it means more reporters, more interviews, more attention.  Alec is legendarily bad at press.  The whole team teases him about it; he’s too grouchy and doesn’t use his words well, usually stammering over what he’s trying to say and giving terrible soundbites.  In his day-to-day life he mostly communicates by rolling his eyes or shrugging.  It’s a lot simpler than opening his mouth.

He’s been an NHL player for four years, now, so the press at least have figured it out by now, and usually they avoid talking to him as much as possible.  It’s a situation that works out best for everyone.  They ask his teammates about him instead, always much happier to get a quote from Raj saying ‘yeah, Lighty really pulled back the first period for us’ than hear Alec fumble out five ‘ums’ in a row and then mutter something about teamwork.  When he does have to be interviewed he tries to stand by Jace and let him do most of the talking, a bullet Jace is all too happy to take.

Of course, that doesn’t work all the time, and it’s when a reporter does turn to him that he knows he’s in trouble.  He’s feeling weird enough after their first game of the season, bone-tired with his blood still thrumming a little oddly from the adrenaline, and the last thing he wants is to have a microphone shoved in his face.  Unfortunately, it’s not a question he can pass to anyone else.

“Alec, you’ve been seen out with Lydia Branwell a lot lately -- do you have anything to say about her?”

“Sure,” says Alec.  It’s simultaneously one of his most uncomfortable topics and one of the things he’s happiest to be asked about, just because he’s been told what to say so many damn times by PR that even he can’t make it sound particularly awkward.  “Lydia is an incredible athlete, really making strides in advancing the NWHL.  I go to as many of her games as I can.  She’s currently leading the campaign to get one hundred percent equal pay for the women’s league and I’m really proud of her and that cause.”  

“Any comment on the rumours that there’s more than just an athletic relationship between the two of you?  You’ve been spotted together on dozens of occasions in the last year but we’ve yet to hear officially that you’re an item.”  

“Lydia and I spend a lot of time together.” The mic crackles a bit, and he awkwardly leans his head in closer, hoping nobody will notice the awkward way he’s rubbing at his hand like he always does when he’s nervous.  “We both travel a lot for our jobs, obviously, so we can’t always see each other often.  But we have fun when we’re together.”

It’s a dodge, a non-answer, like Raphael always tells him to give in the boring PR coaching sessions everyone insists Alec needs just because he doesn’t understand Twitter.  Raphael’s the only person associated with the team who knows  _ why  _ Alec would need to dodge questions about girlfriends, of course.  But still, just when he thinks he’s gotten away with it one of his teammates wolf whistles, and another calls out “ _ I bet you do!”,  _ and Alec’s left feeling like he might as well have just announced to every reporter there that he’s screwing her.  They’d all draw the same conclusions anyway.  
  
Not that he is screwing her.  She’s one of his best friends and they go to charity events on each other’s arms and eat dinner in low-lit restaurants where photographers can see a lot and then go back to his place and watch tape together and talk strategy and if she wants to stay the night, she sleeps in his spare room in her sweatpants.  But his life is far easier when nobody knows that.

He gets out of press unscathed after that -- they ask Jace about Alec’s goal in the last minute, since Jace had the assist on it and talks way better about things like that.  As soon as it’s over, the whole team heads to celebrate at a bar, and usually Alec says no to that kind of thing but it’s the first game of the season so tonight nobody’s taking no for an answer.

They go to a bar just around the corner from the rink where not many people will bother them.  Most of the guys are already four beers deep, Jace about seven, while Alec’s still working on his first.  He doesn’t really like drinking.  Or rather he doesn’t like being drunk -- he only has been a couple of times and both times felt weird, unnerving in the way he was losing control of himself.  A lot of Alec’s life hinges on him being in control of himself.  The guys tease him relentlessly of course.  His usual nickname is Lighty but as soon as they get somewhere with alcohol they only ever call him Lightweight.  Alec doesn’t particularly mind.  He just spends a lot of time rolling his eyes.

“Hey, Lightweight!” Brownie calls over from the bar.  His fiancee’s joined them and she’s practically draped over his shoulders as they make their way over to Alec.  “Why don’t you call up your girl, get her down here?  She’s sweet as hell and you never fuckin’ bring her to anything.”

“Lydia’s got a game tomorrow,” he says, and then finishes his beer in one gulp.  “She has her own team’s events to worry about.”

It’s not like Alec enjoys having to fake-date someone, but if it had to be anyone, Lydia’s pretty much a perfect candidate.  She’s the best goalie in the NWHL and she runs an obscene amount of charities and causes, so it’s never hard to come up with excuses as to why she’s not around much.   Of course, he enjoys the time when she is around -- she’s his friend, after all.  But at times like this, when Brownie’s carrying on a conversation with his fiancee sucking on his neck and his hand halfway up her shirt, Alec does worry that he and Lydia probably aren’t all that convincing.

“That sucks,” is all Brownie says.  “C’mon Lightweight, I’ll get you another beer.  Not quite as good as having your hot girlfriend here but I bet it’s the next best thing.”

“Hah,” says Alec, the most pathetic attempt at a laugh ever.  But everyone else is far too drunk to notice.

\-----

The thing about hockey is that once the season starts, it never  _ stops _ , and every year it still takes Alec a little by surprise.  In the off-season he feels busy, with the crazy amounts of training and practices they do, but it’s nothing compared to playing three or four games a week and constantly travelling, never having a moment to even get his feet settled on solid ground.  
  
Alec loves hockey, but he also thinks it’s probably a good thing he doesn’t have any higher priorities in his life, because he’s pretty sure he’d never find a way to work them around his job.

So they win their first game and then everything just keeps going from there.  The team hits the road the next day, for their first away game of the season, and they win again, though they don’t quite manage another shutout.  A day after that they head straight to Chicago and get their third win in a row, though it’s a much tougher one and they only end up one point ahead in the last five minutes of the game.  They’re back in New York on the fourteenth, and Alec’s already glad for it, even though they’ve only been away three nights.  He’ll have to last a lot longer than that at other points in the season, he knows, but he’s always had this thing about sleeping in his own bed.

Alec loves his apartment.  It’s just around the corner from the rink, not huge but with enough space to suit him, and quiet enough to hear himself think in the ways hotels never are, especially since he always rooms with Jace.  Just being able to sleep without Jace’s snores is a luxury during the season.  His place is minimalistic and rather mismatched -- Izzy calls his decorating sense ‘tragic’ since he mostly just tries to pick things in the most neutral shade of grey and leave it at that.  But it suits him, and he feels calm when he’s there.  He even has a little balcony and he’s high up enough that it gets a gorgeous view of the city.

They have a game the next night, but one day of rest is going to be a luxury until the end of the season now, so Alec knows to make the most of it.  He makes himself dinner -- protein heavy stir-fry approved by his nutritionist -- and watches tape while he eats it, making notes of plays he should talk to Jace about and anything he wants to ask the coaches.  And when’s he’s finished that, and washed up his dishes, he takes his phone out onto the balcony to listen to his voicemail.

Alec hates listening to his voicemail, and puts it off as much as possible.  The only people who seem to leave him messages are people he doesn’t particularly want to hear from.  Sure enough, there’s a couple of things from his manager, one asking him to do an interview he desperately doesn’t want to do.  Then there’s one from his parents.  His mother tells him to play a good season and to remember to call them more often, all in that tone of voice she can use to make something which should sound supportive into a threat.  His dad talks for ten minutes about strategy.  Alec fast-forwards through most of that.

He makes a note to reply to their message at a time when he’s sure they won’t be home so he won’t actually have to speak to them, and then listens to his final voicemail.  It’s the only one he’s vaguely pleased to hear, since it’s from Izzy.  She doesn’t say much.  She tells him how her master’s in biology is going, and then angrily rants about a ref from the last game, even though she only watched it on TV and they’d won anyway.  But it makes Alec smile anyway -- Izzy’s messages always do.

That’s it.  The grand sum of people who want to get in touch with him.  

It’s still early but his career kind of dictates him having the sleep schedule of a grandpa, so after that, Alec starts getting ready for bed.  He wonders what the other guys on the team have done tonight.  He knows Jace went to a bar, and probably got laid, since he always seems to.  Luke has his wife and stepdaughter -- Izzy’s best friend -- to get back to.  Brownie has his fiancee.  A lot of the guys on the team are married, actually, about half of them with young kids, and most of the unmarried guys have roommates.

It hits Alec rather suddenly that he’s probably the only guy on the whole team who’s spent this night alone.  
  
He goes to bed pretty quickly after that.  He curls his long limbs up as small as they’ll go, folds himself into his duvet, and wraps the edges around as tight as he can until it feels like the outside world isn’t touching him at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tomorrow, in 'november': the Blades get a great start to the season, Izzy has a birthday, and Alec meets the dazzling Magnus Bane -- and is instantly captivated.
> 
> [my tumblr](http://milominderbindered.tumblr.com)!


	2. Chapter Two: November

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to everyone who commented & kudosed on the first chap! here's where stuff starts to get interesting ;)
> 
> for those of you who read my other malec fic, 'anything you say', thanks for being so patient for the next chap! this is gonna be my priority until i've finished posting it, but ays will definitely be getting an update in the next day or two as well <33

October flies by in a frenzy of pucks and goals and cellys and statistics that take over Alec’s brain and don’t leave him much time to even breathe of his own accord.  He remembers every one of their games -- win, win, win, lose, win, win, lose, win, lose, win, win, lose, win.  By the time November rolls around he’s dreaming in hockey commentary, seeing shots-on-goal numbers every time he closes his eyes.

He loves it.  Alec’s always thrived most when he has something to devote himself to completely.  

They start of November with two wins, and the team is feeling pretty damn good.  It’s always easier on home ice, though, and they have to go on the road again the next day.  It’s a four night trip, and as if half a week away from home wasn’t gonna feel weird already, Izzy’s birthday falls smack dab in the middle of it.

It’s not that he’s seen her every single birthday of her life, of course.  This is his fourth year in the NHL so he’s hardly new to travelling, and Izzy spent a year in Spain while they were both in college, too.  But there’s a whole other side to his sister turning twenty-three that has Alec’s brain churning up into anxious knots.

Her gift.

It’s an unfortunate truth of Alec’s existence, but he’s really terrible with gifts.  Always has been.  He has more money than he could possibly know what to do with and never shops for himself, which is a terrible combination, and it certainly doesn’t help that Isabelle is the pickiest person he knows and has tastes that change like the wind.  Jace somehow always gets it right, like he has very specific psychic powers which are only attuned to know what shoes or books or fancy pieces of scientific equipment Izzy will want on that exact day.  He only ever laughs when Alec asks him how he does it.  
  
If they didn’t live in the center of New York Alec would buy her a car or something, but that’d be ridiculous here.  For her last birthday he paid her apartment rent for a year.  She’d seemed more annoyed than happy about that because she’s still insisting she can do everything herself, though he’s told her a hundred times that while she’s still in school getting her master’s he wants to help her out as much as he can.  But this year, before he can contemplate paying her tuition or bills or just plain handing her a check for a few thousand dollars to do whatever she likes, Izzy calls him and forbids him from following through on any of it.

“I am going to help you with this, since you’re so completely useless,” she says, and Alec can admit he’s nothing less than intensely relieved.  “I just found that my absolute favourite style blogger on Instagram owns a store in New York.  It’s all beautiful and glamorous and vintage, so it’ll be expensive enough for you to feel like you’ve achieved something, but not as expensive as a  _ year of freaking New York rent, Alec.” _

“Will you let that go?” he grouches, even as he’s pulling on his shoes to go in search of this store.  “I’m your big brother, Iz, I’m supposed to take care of you.  Even if you are a total pain in the ass.”

“Well this year, why don’t you just focus on taking care of my wardrobe, and we’ll both be happy.”  Alec pulls a face even though she can’t see him -- it’s good to indulge your juvenile side once in awhile, he thinks.  “The place is in Brooklyn, and it’s called Downworld.  I’m sending you pictures of some things I might like.  I believe in you, big brother.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he says, rolling his eyes, and hangs up.  

Since he has to make the most of this rare free day before they’re off on their next roadie, he sets off only five minutes later, gets a cab to Brooklyn and then follows directions on his phone down a few winding little sidestreets before finding the store.  Even from the window he’s not surprised this is a place Izzy’s sent him; it looks a strange mixture of incredibly glamorous and incredibly odd, and almost everything is covered in glitter.  

A bell dings above the door as Alec steps in.  He’s immediately overwhelmed by racks of glimmering clothes crammed into the small space, and he feels somehow wrong to be there, too tall and unglamorous, like his boots are going to track mud over the bright wooden floor or his big hands are going to knock everything over like rows of dominoes.  They’re ridiculous concerns, but he still folds in on himself a little as he makes his way through the store, trying to find an employee he can ask about the pictures Izzy had sent him.

“Can I help you, handsome?” says a wicked voice behind him, and Alec starts, spinning around.  It takes him a moment to locate the voice among the racks of clothes and precariously balanced mannequins, but as soon as he does, Alec lets out an embarrassing squeak in the back of his throat and almost trips over.

“Uh, yeah,” says Alec, his voice sounding a little too thick and weird, because he’s speaking to the most beautiful man he’s ever seen in his life.  He steps out from behind a counter and heads towards Alec, seeming to glimmer with every movement he makes; his body is lithe and graceful, his outfit both brashly colourful and elegant at the same time, his eyes ringed in dark glitter and somehow so full of emotion that it feels like a punch to Alec’s gut.  There’s something almost ethereal about him.  Alec instantly fumbles to get his phone out of his pocket and pull up one of the pictures Izzy had sent just so he has somewhere to avert his eyes, anything to force him to stop looking, because he’s enamoured within seconds of looking at this man and Alec knows himself well enough to know it’s probably all too obvious.

“I’m Magnus.”   He’s drawn right up in front of Alec now, and he’s a few inches shorter, just enough that he’s looking up to meet Alec’s eyes which is all too endearing.

“Alec.”  His voice comes out embarrassingly weak, and a moment later he finds the picture, practically shoves his phone towards Magnus.  “I, um, I’ve been told to get something like this?”

And then the next thirty minutes pass in a blur.

It turns out Magnus can talk about fashion for even longer than Izzy can, and even though Izzy had given him a very specific list of options for her gift, he lets himself be led around and shown what feels like every item in the store.  He eventually ends up with a shimmering silver dress that Izzy had asked for, and at the last second he impulse buys a ridiculously expensive necklace, all silver and rubies, that she hadn’t asked for but which he’s at least sixty percent confident she’ll like.  Izzy always likes shiny things.

As he rings up the purchases and then giftwraps them, Magnus talks about the necklace.  He spins a tale of crossed lovers in Victorian England, his voice slow and deep and all too sweet as he talks, and Alec feels pathetic but he’s hanging on to every word.  He doesn’t even care about the story.  But Magnus is telling it so well, with a certain dark amount of passion that’s making Alec’s knees tremble.  It’s been too long since he got laid, he knows.  That’s the only excuse for how ridiculously strongly he finds himself wanting this man that he doesn’t even know.

“So, are these for a special someone?” Magnus asks, his long fingers deftly curling ribbon around the top of the gift.  Alec is trying really hard not to look at those fingers.  He really, really is.

“Sister,” he manages to say without stuttering, and Magnus grins.  Is he fishing to see if Alec has a girlfriend?  Alec doesn’t believe in God and yet for a moment he can’t help but send up a prayer to whoever might be listening, out there in the vast and inexplicable cosmos --  _ please let him be fishing.   _ “She told me to come here -- I guess she follows you on Instagram?  Oh, uh, if you’re the owner, I guess I didn’t ask that yet?”

“Don’t worry, you’ve got the right guy.”  Magnus looks incredibly amused by Alec’s stuttering, and Alec can’t decide if that’s a good thing or just embarrassing.  “I took the store over from a lovely little old couple a few years back now, though evidently I’ve made it rather more fabulous since then.”  He finishes tying the ribbon with a flourish, and then leans further over the counter, resting loose on his elbows and batting his eyelashes up at Alec.  “And what do you do, Alexander?”

_ God,  _ but he’s so pretty.  Alec swallows hard in his throat.  He feels like he can barely keep track of the conversation when he’s staring into Magnus’s big eyes like this.

“Um.  I’m a professional hockey player.  I play for the New York Blades.”  He’s impressed he can even remember the name of the team right now.  They’re stood way too close with the way Magnus is leaning over the counter, close enough that if anyone walked in right now it would probably look weird.  It would probably look like they were about to -- Alec resolutely stops himself in the middle of that thought.

“Oh dear, I’m going to have to admit that I’ve never seen a game of hockey in my life.  I’m sure that’s a very good team, though?”

Alec lets out a little soft snort of laughter.  Magnus doesn’t seem to be joking, either -- it’s not like Alec gets recognised on the street every day or anything, but usually people around here have at least heard of the Blades.  Their home ice is less than fifteen minutes away.  Magnus suddenly seems just the tiniest little bit less intimidating -- at least he doesn’t know everything in the world.

“Some people think so.”  Alec lets his lips twitch into a smile.  “We’re an NHL team.”  A blank look from Magnus.  “That’s the highest league of hockey.”

“Well in that case, I’m impressed,” says Magnus, and he actually does look it.  “Perhaps I should learn some more about it.”

“You should come to a game sometime,” Alec suggests way too quickly, and then flushes.  Magnus just looks at him for a long moment, eyes appraising and no less than slightly wicked, before shrugging.

“Maybe I’ll do that.  All I know at the moment is that you play on ice and hit a ball with sticks.  I was also led to believe that most players were far less attractive than you, with far less teeth.”

Alec gulps.  There’s no way he’s reading too much into this, Magnus is definitely flirting, and it’s been so long since Alec got flirted with and he’s never been good at it to start with and he’s never had a relationship that lasted longer than three nights and he is  _ not  _ qualified for this.

“It’s, uh -- we -- it’s a puck.  Um, not a ball.”

Also, one of his teeth is fake, but he doesn’t feel like he needs to bring that up.

Magnus looks delighted by the stammering.  He’s finished wrapping both Izzy’s presents now, though, and Alec takes them almost reluctantly, wishing he had a reason to drag this out further.  He considers suddenly making up a fictional cousin who also has a birthday coming up that he’s only just remembered, but it feels a little obvious.

“Maybe we should swap numbers?” Magnus says.  “In case you need any more help with gifts -- or anything else.”

Alec feels like if he needed any more help with gifts he probably wouldn’t need to give Magnus his number.  He could come back to the store any time, or take one of the business cards off the counter which prominently display both Downworld’s phone number and website.

“Uh, good idea,” says Alec, his voice coming out weird.  He pretends not to notice the business cards.  Any excuse is a good excuse when Magnus is looking at him with eyes like that.

\-----

So they head off on their roadie, lose the first game but win the second.  It’s still relatively early in the season and nobody’s quite too stressed or too tired yet, nobody’s out with serious injuries, it seems like things are kind of going their way.

Things start to go Alec’s way too, maybe, on the third day of their roadie, Izzy’s birthday.  She’d opened her gifts that morning in his absence and send him a lot of hugely happy texts, mostly consisting of exclamation points and heart emojis, which hopefully means that Alec’s actually got her birthday right this time.  When his phone buzzes with a text just as they’re coming out of practice, Alec assumes it’ll be from her again.

It’s not.  It’s from Magnus.  Alec’s heart starts beating inexplicably faster as soon as he sees the name on his screen -- he’d saved it just as that,  _ Magnus,  _ as if they have any level of familiarity with each other.  Alec doesn’t think one time of meeting each other really qualifies him to have Magnus saved under just his first name.  They’d spent less than an hour together in the store.

Of course, though, there’s only one Magnus he has ever met, only one Magnus this is from.  He checks nobody’s around before leaning on the wall in the corridor outside the changing rooms, and opening it.

[ Nov.7 -- 13:20 -- From: Magnus ]

_ Did your sister open her gifts yet? I hope she likes them!  _

Alec’s heart is thumping in his chest.  It’s  ridiculous , and embarrassing.  The text couldn’t possibly be more innocent, and it’s not like Alec’s some blushing virgin or something.  He’s never had a real boyfriend but he’s had plenty of secret hookups, enough to probably become a little more jaded than he should be.  He shouldn’t feel this way over a cute boy texting him.  

And yet he does, and has to take a moment to calm down before he responds.  He’d mentioned the date of Izzy’s birthday while Magnus was helping him choose her gifts, but he still can’t believe Magnus remembered the day.  Alec takes a screenshot of Izzy’s excited messages and adds that to his text, figuring a picture is worth a thousand words and all that.

[ Nov.7 -- 13:22 -- To: Magnus ]

_i’ll let you judge for urself by her response_ [Attached: IMG3078]

[ Nov.7 -- 13:22 -- From: Magnus ]

_ Hmm, I’m no detective, but I’d say you’re in the clear.  You should tell her to come into the store some time!  I’d love to meet the woman with such fabulous fashion sense, especially if she’s as cute as you ;) _

That nearly kills Alec.  Is Magnus  flirting with him?  Even after Alec was awkward and a bit of an idiot and also mentioned the fact that he’s a professional athlete?  Or -- or is Magnus trying to make it clear that he’s more interested in Alec’s sister?  That’s he’s  straight ?  He’d seemed kind of flirty and, well, bordering on flamboyant, but Alec knows that’s nothing to make assumptions based on.  They hardly sat down and had a conversation about their sexualities.  Alec’s never in his life sat down with  anyone  and had a conversation about his sexuality.

[ Nov.7 -- 13:23 -- To: Magnus ]

_ she’d probably freak.  she’s a huge fan of ur instagram (is that how you spell it?) _

[ Nov.7 -- 13:23 -- From: Magnus ]

_ Ha!  That is indeed how you spell it, well done.  And even better, I always love meeting people who already like me.  You could always come back to the store too and introduce her, you know. _

Oh.  Is Alec making it up, or does that seem like an invitation to see him again?

[ Nov.7 -- 13:24 -- To: Magnus ]

_ that would be nice.  i have back to back games for a while, though.  do u always work on saturdays? _

[ Nov.7 -- 13:24 -- From: Magnus ]

_ I do indeed. It’s how I justify foisting the place off on my employees the rest of the week ;)  Perhaps I’ll see you around, then! _

Alec swallows hard as he replies.

[ Nov.7 -- 13:25 -- To: Magnus ]

_yeah.  definitely._

He puts his phone away and finally leaves the rink, feeling like his legs are a little less steady than they were ten minutes ago.  

\-----

And then, somehow, Alec manages to not be in New York for the next three Saturdays.

They come home for a single night and somehow win 5-0 on home ice, which even Alec will admit feels good.  Then they’re off again, three games and six nights on the road.  They win the first game, lose the second, and even though they’re doing well in the season so far there’s an air of frustration around the fact that they can’t seem to get a good win streak going.  The games are tough and they’re only gonna get tougher as the season goes on.

So it’s more than two weeks with the team mostly on the road, and through it all, Magnus keeps texting him.

Alec can’t even figure out  _ why.   _ He’s oddly thrilled by it, and he responds to every single text, but there’s a little guilty pit in his stomach that feels like maybe he shouldn’t encourage this.  He has no intention to come out, he’s still pretending to date Lydia, nobody on the whole team even knows -- it would be ridiculous to get involved with someone, surely.  It would almost even be cruel to lead Magnus on.

He sends messages about odd customers and the book he’s reading.  He admits that he’s googled Alec and still doesn’t understand a thing about hockey but appreciates all the shirtless locker room pics.  He doesn’t seem to have any shame at all when it comes to admitting things like that -- actually, he’s still flirting rather heavily.  Alec can’t tell how much intent there is behind the flirting, since Magnus seems so confident that it’s entirely possible he’s like this with anyone, but he supposes to keep texting this much Magnus must have  _ some  _ interest.  Which makes Alec worry and want in equal measure.  

Alec doesn’t have a lot of superstitions like some of the other guys do, but he has to admit that when Magnus texts him the whole day before their last game of the roadie, Alec’s not actually surprised that they win it 5-2.  It’s on Raj’s birthday, too, so the whole team insists on going out afterwards to enjoy the Boston nightlife, even if just for a few hours since they have to get up early to head back to New York tomorrow.  Alec would usually say no, and he kind of wants to this time, wants to go back to the room and text Magnus about the game and then get an early night, but nobody will let him.

“C’mon, it’s his birthday!” Jace insists as he drags Alec out of the hotel with the rest of the guys.  “Dude, it’s practically criminal not to go out tonight.”

They end up at a bar where most people are wearing not much and drunker than Alec has ever been in his life, and immediately take over the two biggest tables in the place.  A whole hockey team going out together is actually kind of a hazard, in Alec’s opinion.

“First round’s on Brownie!” Raj announces, ‘cus Brownie scored two goals that night, and he doesn’t put up any fuss at all, turning back up at their table a few minutes later with an obscene amount of beer pitchers.

Alec isn’t a fan of celebrations, or bars, or drinking, or loud places, so he’s kind of grumpy as he shoves himself into the furthest corner of their booth and sips at his beer, tuning out most of the conversation.  When someone suggests a drinking game he pulls out his phone and checks his email just to look like he’s busy on it.  But a few seconds after he’s got it out, a notification actually pops up.

It’s a snapchat.  Alec barely uses snapchat.  He sends Izzy scenery photos on the rare occasion they get to see any cool sights in the cities they travel to for games, and most nights he puts a photo of his dinner on his story, since he likes cooking.  Quite a lot of people follow him, or whatever it’s called, but they’re all fans.  He doesn’t have a separate one for the team and for his personal life, like most of the guys do.  He doesn’t really see the point.

But yesterday, Magnus had asked to add him.  It hadn’t occurred to Alec why on earth he’d want to, but he’d said yes, of course.  And now -- now he’s got a little yellow notification telling him that  _ magnificentbane  _ has sent him a new snap.

Alec glances around before he opens it, making sure nobody else is paying attention.  It’s not like he thinks Magnus will have sent him anything risque, but with Alec’s life he can never be too careful.  His hand is steady as he opens the app but only because he’s focusing so much on stopping it from shaking.

The picture is a selfie.  Alec doesn’t really take selfies but he’s never been more glad that they exist in his life.  It’s captioned, ‘off to a costume party!’, and sure enough Magnus is dressed up; his shirt is an almost-see-through kind of shimmering black and he has lots of dark eyeliner and his lips are gently parted and coated in glitter with his tongue just poking out between them, and he has a cat-ear headband but it looks interesting and like it’s made out of spiralling metal so it’s probably some amazing vintage thing from his store, and one of his hands is in the photo, long fingers with glimmering silver rings and electric blue nails, curled up like a claw.  The expression on his face is wicked and flirtatious and bewitching.  And Alec is really, really worryingly instantly turned on.

He wants to screenshot it but he feels like that might be creepy.  This is only the second time he’s seen Magnus’s face, after meeting him in the store.  So instead he just stares wide-eyed with a lump in his throat for the full ten seconds that it plays.  
  
Fuck it, no, at the last possible second he screenshots it.  He doesn’t even care that Magnus will know he has.  Something that beautiful doesn’t deserve to be lost in the ether of the internet, or wherever it is expired snapchats go to die.

He almost completely forgets where he is until a loud wolf-whistle pulls him back to the grungy bar table and his drunken teammates.  In the minute since Alec looked at his phone, most of the guys have turned to stare at him, and he didn’t even notice it happening.  His cheeks flush a little and he shoves his phone back into his pocket.

About half the table bursts out laughing.

“Now  _ there’s  _ an expression we don’t get to see on Lightweight very often!” 

Can they really identify pure, undying lust as an expression?  Oh no.  Alec is suddenly terrified of how obvious he is as a human being.  He’s always been terrible at lying, even with his face.  It doesn’t help that he’s been sharing a bathroom with Jace for six days so he hasn’t jerked off since they left New York and he’s kind of frustrated and then Magnus has to go and look like  _ that  _ \-- Alec feels kind of like a perv for how much it’s affecting him.

“Message from your girl?” Luke asks, a wicked kind of smile playing around his lips.  Alec hates Luke for a few long seconds.  He always acts like he’s the mature, responsible one on the team, but secretly he’s just as bad as the rest of them.

“It was a snapchat, didn’t you see him screenshot it?” 

“So Lighty, what  _ do  _ sweet Lydia’s tits look like?”

It’s not even half the table anymore, the whole team is laughing at him now.  They’re too drunk for their own good.  Alec rolls his eyes at all of them and tries not to feel like they all have x-ray vision and are going to figure out that he’s actually turning pink over a completely innocent photo of a  _ man. _

“Would you guys grow up?” he says, taking a quick mouthful of beer.  “And don’t talk about Lydia like that.”

Of course, nobody lets it go.  Alec supposes there’s a silver lining.  At least they all do seem to be convinced that he’s just as straight as the rest of them.

They don’t stay out long because the team has a midnight curfew when they’re away, so a couple of hours later, Jace and Alec are climbing into bed in their hotel room.  They shared a room for a couple of years when they were kids so it seems kind of natural that they always share on roadies, too -- Alec’s the only one who can sleep through Jace’s snoring.  They navigate their nighttime routine easily, getting changed and brushing their teeth and Jace taking a quick shower, though Alec prefers to shower in the mornings.  And then they both climb into bed, and there’s silence for a minute, and Alec’s tired enough that he already feels like he’s about to drop off.

“So who really sent you that picture?”

Alec’s eyes shoot open but it’s so dark that he can’t see the expression on Jace’s face at all, so he squeezes them shut again.

“How do you know it wasn’t Lydia?”  Does his voice sound as casual as he's desperately trying to make it?

“Alec.  Please.  I’ve been your brother since we were ten.  I know you’ve never said it, but -- c’mon, dude.  I  _ know.” _

Alec’s heart shoves up into his throat and he feels like he’s choking on it.

“Oh,” he says, voice thick, and buries himself further under his duvet like it might protect him.  The way Jace is saying it, so certain and factual, it doesn’t seem like there’s even any point denying it.

“So who was it?  Do you have a boyfriend?  Cus I’m gonna be pissed if you do and I haven’t met him yet.”

“No,” says Alec. His voice sounds odd to his own ears, a little too weak and further away than it should be.  “No - no boyfriend.  I, I mean, there’s a guy.  It was a guy.  The photo.  He -- it was just showing me his outfit for a party, it wasn’t anything like -- and I only met him a couple of weeks ago anyway.”

“Alec.”  Jace’s voice is so amused that it makes Alec blush.  “Calm down, bro.  You like this guy?”

For a long moment, there’s silence, but even in the darkness it’s not a restful kind of silence and Alec’s feeling more awake than he has in hours.

“Yeah,” he says finally.  “Of course I do.  Anyone would be crazy not to like him.  But -- I mean, I don’t know if I can.  Coming out is just -- a no, right now.  The only people who even know about me are Izzy and Raphael.”

“You told Raphael before me?”  Now Jace sounds a little annoyed, which somehow makes Alec feel better.  “You’re not even friends.”

“PR must have given you the same talk when you signed.  Y’know, about if there was anything in your life you didn’t want getting out, or anything they needed to spin.  I had to tell Raphael then, it -- well, it seemed safer, to have someone telling me how to hide it.”

“Yeah, you’ve never been very good at that by yourself.”

“Hey,” Alec protests.  Jace is back to just sounding amused, and Alec throws a pillow across the dark room, immensely satisfied when he hears it hit his target with a soft  _ oomph _ .

“Kidding, kidding.  Well, not really.  But listen dude -- you know I’ll support you, right?  And the team are all good guys.  I mean, whatever you wanna do, but I don’t think coming out would be so bad.  If you need to do it.”

For a minute, Alec doesn’t know what to say.  He stares up at the ceiling, his brain fuzzy with conflicting thoughts and his stomach churning a little.  He hadn’t had any clue that Jace knew about him, and all of a sudden he’s wondering how many other people can see it.  Is he even as closeted as he thinks he is?  The idea of people knowing fills him with a low kind of terror, but the truth is, probably it would never be as bad as he’s imagining.

“Yeah, I know you will,” he says eventually, when Jace might even have fallen asleep.  “I don’t know about everyone else.  But thanks, Jace.”  
  
Jace mumbles something in response, but it turns into a snore halfway through, so Alec’s not sure if he heard it at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lemme know if you liked the chap, and malec's first meeting!! 
> 
> up tomorrow in 'December': Alec finally goes back to see Magnus in person, and their relationship progresses from there. Also, Alec plays a lot more hockey. Like always.
> 
> [my tumblr](http://milominderbindered.tumblr.com) if you wanna come scream about malec w/ me!


	3. Chapter Three: December

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks so much to everyone who's left comments and kudos!! without further ado, the longest chap yet (though not the longest of the fic ;P ). hope you guys enjoy!!!
> 
> to skip the naughty parts, stop at "They stay like that for what could be minutes or a lot longer" and skip to '"Well that was hot", says Magnus'

They get back to New York, win two home games in a row, and on December sixth, Alec goes back to Magnus’s store.

He doesn’t bring Izzy, barely even remembers that was supposed to be his pretence for coming back.  He’s being worked to the bone like they all are during the season, he’s tired and intensely focused on his game to the point of almost excluding anything else -- but not quite.  Because he still can’t stop thinking about Magnus, he texts and his snapchats and his overwhelming wicked confidence and his pretty eyes.  And because Alec’s so tired from games every two or three days, he doesn’t really have the energy to force himself to resist.

Alec has never felt so instantly attracted to anyone before, so  _ drawn  _ to a guy that it feels like an almost physical pull.  It’s near impossible to meet guys in his line of work, between the neverending business and the concrete-sealed closet he’s buried in, but still, Alec isn’t inexperienced.  He’s had probably more than his share of one night stands at parties and bars, even had semi-regular things going on with a couple of other guys in the NHL, though it’d ended up being impossible to create any real relationship with either of them, hockey always managing to get in the way.  Alec’s felt physical attraction a thousand times, he’s had what he considers pretty fucking amazing sex -- and still, he’s never felt what he’s feeling for Magnus.  
  
It’s not like he even knows Magnus.  They’ve met once before, and Alec had felt like this then, too, even if he was completely unable to process it simply because of how alien the feeling was, how it had left him slightly dazed and unable to lock himself away like usual.  Since then they’ve been texting, sure, a couple times a day, and it’s been nice and Magnus is witty and amusing but -- it’s hard to really get to know someone over text.  

So they barely know each other.  And yet Alec still can’t shake this feeling, this lightning-pulse attraction that’s more intense than anything he’s ever felt before and is dragging him back to Magnus with every step he takes.

It’s a Saturday, and Magnus is in the store just like he’d promised to be.  He’s taking photos of a glamorously dressed mannequin when Alec enters, and Alec takes the moment before Magnus turns around to just appreciate the look of him; his glittery but casual outfit, the elegant curves of his body, the way he somehow seems so familiar a presence even though this is only the second time Alec’s ever been in a room with him.  Maybe it’s because of the texts where he’s learned Magnus’s voice, and the snapchats where he’s gotten too-quick glimpses at his face, but Alec feels far more comfortable than he should just from seeing Magnus across a room.  
  
Then Magnus turns around, and their eyes meet, and Alec can already feel himself starting to blush.

“Well here’s a sight for sore eyes,” Magnus says.  Alec feels like he actually probably looks like a mess, in his black jeans and hoodie with his crazy unbrushed hair, but Magnus is gazing at him appreciatively and it makes Alec blush down the back of his neck.

“Hi,” he says, jamming his hands into his pockets and dodging a few racks of clothes to make his way to the other side of the little store, idly pretending to look at the mannequin Magnus was dressing but really just wanting an excuse to be closer.  Magnus smells amazing, like natural sandalwood and coffee, and Alec wishes for a moment he could just sink right into that smell.

“Let me guess, you were in the neighbourhood?”  Magnus arches an eyebrow, seemingly teasing, and Alec smiles awkwardly.

“No, I -- I mean, I came to see you.  I’m sorry it’s been so long since you, y’know, you invited me back or whatever, it’s just always crazy in the season ‘cus we play about four games a week and we have training every day so we don’t really get  _ time off,  _ but I, I did want to come, I mean --”

“Alexander,” Magnus interrupts, eyes amused.  It’s been his favourite thing to call Alec in texts ever since Alec let it slip that was his full name, but it’s the first time he’s actually heard Magnus  _ say  _ it, and the sound sends a thrilling shiver down Alec’s spine.  “It’s quite alright.  I’ve actually looked up your crazy team schedule, so I wasn’t expecting you to race over here the next day or anything.  It’s nice that you’re here now, though.”

He seems to genuinely mean it, his eyes warm and soft, and somehow that just makes Alec feel more embarrassed.

“Right,” he says, though he’s not quite sure what he’s agreeing with.  Magnus hums a little.

“So, are you here for business or pleasure?”

“I -- Uh, I mean, I’m not -- I didn’t need --”

Magnus grins.

“Pleasure, then,” he deduces.  Alec swallows hard.

“I guess that's one way of putting it,” he agrees quietly.  Magnus looks happy and moves away from the mannequin; Alec follows at his heels and finds himself led to the back of the store and into a little back room, which is stuffed with untagged clothes, presumably stock Magnus has yet to sort through and price, and a few mismatched chairs.  Alec hesitantly folds himself into one of the elegant seats, hands rubbing awkwardly across his knees, and asks, “Uh, so -- how was your day?”

Immediately after he says it, before Magnus can reply, the bell above the door trills in the other room.  

“Customer,” Magnus says, springing up but looking a little regretful.  “I'll be back in a minute -- wait for me here?”

“Sure,” Alec agrees.  His heart is beating too fast and his mouth feels like it's full of cotton wool.  Magnus gives him one last lingering look and then slips out the door of the storeroom again.

Alec takes out his phone and gets through the next three levels of candy crush, listening to the slightly muffled sounds of Magnus selling someone a dress.  He's a good salesman, dazzling and charming and persuasive, but Alec’s secretly pleased to note that he doesn't sound like he's flirting with this customer at all the way he's been flirting with Alec.  Eventually the customer leaves, though, and a few moments later Magnus is appearing in the door again.  

“Sorry about that, Alexander! I've flipped the sign on the door, so I am officially closed for my break,” Magnus tells him, his smile far over the line to flirtatious as he crosses the room.  “Should be no more interruptions.”

Alec’s heart starts racing as he slips phone back into his pocket. 

“Okay,” he says, hesitant.  Magnus comes over and sits back down, awfully close.  They're all alone.  Alec feels infinitely aware of how small the room is, of the way it suddenly seems like they are the largest thing in the universe and everything not in their buzzing, enclosed space has fallen away.   _ No more interruptions _ .  The way Magnus is looking at him from under his lashes.  Is Magnus going to kiss him?

Alec's whole body feels warm; feverish, really.  He doesn't even know what he wants, except that he wants Magnus.  He shifts in his seat, angling his body imperceptibly closer to Magnus.

Magnus doesn't kiss him.

Instead, he leans in, smiles, and says, “Alexander, I'm going to take a risk here, so feel free to say no.  But would you like to go on a date with me?”

Alec's heart stops.

“Yes,” he says, after a long beat in which Magnus actually looks a stunning, tiny bit  _ nervous _ . “I- I mean, I would like to, I mean, yes, that sounds fun, but -- Magnus… I’m a professional athlete.  You have to understand, I can't be -- I’m not --  _ out.” _

Magnus reaches over, for a moment looking like he’s about to put his hand on Alec’s arm.  But instead he just trails his fingertips there, so lightly that Alec’s not convinced he’s actually touching at all, and then tugs lightly on the string of Alec’s hoodie before dropping his hand again.  It’s an oddly tender, affectionate gesture, even in its complete simplicity.  Alec feels calmed by it somehow.

“I know I may not look it, but I’m a rather private person.  I know how to keep things discreet if that’s what you want.”

Alec takes a deep breath.  That is what he wants.  Even telling Magnus is too much, really.  Every time Alec has hooked up with anyone in his whole life has been a risk -- even before he was in the NHL he knew that was what he wanted to do with his life, and he knew that any random guy he fucked could see his face on TV one day and call up a tabloid and out him and ruin Alec’s whole life.  It’s just not a world he’s ready to be out in.  His team would be supportive on the surface but Raphael, the head of their PR and legal team, has been upfront about the fact that Alec would face a huge amount of scrutiny from the press, and probably outright homophobia from some media and a lot of fans.  All Alec wants to do is play hockey.  He doesn’t even like talking to the press about the game, hates being made to discuss his fake relationship with Lydia -- he doesn’t think he could handle being interrogated like that about anything  _ real. _

But he does want to see Magnus.  He wants to do a lot of things with Magnus, or at the very least see where this  _ whatever  _ between them could go.  He’s never felt like this before so he knows he’ll hate himself if he doesn’t try.

“Do you want to come over to my apartment some time?” Alec asks.  “I like cooking.  I -- well, I could make you dinner.”

He doesn’t overthink it, doesn’t actually think any further than that at all.  But when Magnus grins and says  _ yes,  _ Alec’s pretty sure he’s made the right decision.

\-----

It seems somehow like the fates are smiling on them, because despite Alec’s insane schedule and Magnus’s own commitments to his business, they manage to arrange a date for the next Saturday.  Alec has a home game on the twelfth, and another on the fifteenth, but his two days between that are blessedly free apart from training.  He doesn’t even have to be at the rink until ten thirty on Sunday, if he skips seeing the trainer -- and his hip is feeling mostly fine at the moment anyway -- so he takes all this as a sign that asking Magnus over really was a good idea.

He’s buzzing with excitement all through their Saturday practice, to the point where Jace notices and won’t stop teasing him about it, but it actually seems to help Alec’s game.  Alec always assumed that if he ever developed a -- well, a  _ crush  _ or whatever, that it would distract him from hockey.  It was a big part of why he avoided romantic entanglements like bubonic sores.  But Magnus seems to be having the opposite effect.  Alec supposes it could change after they’ve actually been on a date, instead of just carrying on this intense month of text-flirting, but part of him believes it won’t.  That Magnus is just magic.

It’s also one of the first times Alec considers his utter lack of free time a blessing, but he’s so busy with training and conditioning and drills and team meetings that he barely gets any time to be nervous on Saturday.  By the time he gets back to his apartment in the afternoon, he has to jump straight in the shower, get changed, and start making dinner.

The nerves do arrive, though, as he cooks.  He doesn’t really have a frame of reference for what to do here, because Alec has never invited a guy over to his apartment before.  He usually hooks up when they're on the road, finding a little more anonymity in cities away from his home ice, and on the rare occasion he sleeps with someone in New York, he goes back to their place.  It's easier and he can be sure to leave right after it’s done.  

None of it's a regular occurrence, honestly.  Some guys on the team seem to go and get laid after every freaking game.  Alec does so a few times a year, at most.

He supposes he's pretty inexperienced, in the grand scheme of things.  He hadn't even come to terms with his sexuality by the end of high school, so the most he did then was closed-mouth kiss a girl in spin the bottle at Jace’s birthday party.  There were a few guys in college.  But it's just never been his priority. 

Hockey has always come before sex.

Alec’s never even had a boyfriend.  He's too busy, and it's too risky, and he's fine by himself anyway -- those have always been his excuses.  The most regular deal he ever had was with a guy on his college team, but they were never  _ together _ .  It was about convenience.  Derek had actually been kind of a jerk, but he was hot and they were always together because of the team, and they both knew they could count on each other to be discreet.  They both wanted to go pro.  Derek’s in the AHL down in California now, and they haven't spoken since graduation. 

So, yeah, he's never had a hook up at his apartment.  Not that he just wants to hook up with Magnus. That's the scariest part -- the fact that Alec  _ likes _ him.  The fact that they've been talking for a month and Alec knows just how funny and dry and clever and wicked Magnus can be.  And how kind.  

Alec has had sex before and he has been on dates before, but the two have never interlinked, and he’s never even wanted them to.  He’s hooked up with people who won’t tell or who he’ll never have to see again, and he's gone on dates.  With girls.  Set up by Jace in college and his PR team since then.  The nice dinners in candlelit restaurants that he and Lydia go on, those are dates, except for the part where they both know they're not.

Oh.  Crap.  The doorbell rings and in the exact same moment, Alec realises -- this is his first real date.

\-----

Magnus is somehow dressed both most casually and more extravagantly than he had been at work.  His clothes look a little simpler, no complicated buckles or ruffles or layered jackets like Alec sees in the Instagram posts he still won't admit he's stalking, just a floaty red shirt tucked into black jeans with a few intricately embroidered patches on them.  But at the same time, his makeup is precise and complex, hair swept up with some new red streaks and a dusting of glitter, and he's wearing heaps of silver jewellery that makes Alec’s breath catch a little.

“Hey,” says Alec, tragically aware of how stunned his voice comes out.  “You look -- uh -- you look really nice.”

He swallows hard and Magnus just looks pleased, maybe a little amused.

“Well, thankyou,” he says, “You clean up rather deliciously yourself!”

Alec had barely done more than shower and swap his  _ New York Blades  _ t-shirt for something with buttons, but as Magnus brushes past him into the apartment, it doesn't seem important to bring that up. 

“I like your place.”  Magnus, of course, heads right across the room, as everyone always does when they first set foot in here, to where the stripped floorboards reach a set of clear glass doors and lead out onto the balcony.  Admittedly, it's an amazing view.  Then he wheels back around again to look at Alec over the top of the sofa.  “Though you could certainly benefit from a few pops of colour amongst all this grey and black, honestly, you should fire your decorator.”

“IKEA is my decorator,” Alec admits, his lips twitching up into an apologetic smile.  Magnus’s eyes widen and he clutches his chest dramatically.

“That's the worst thing you've ever said to me, Alexander!  Please, for the sake of my sanity and your wellbeing, let me at least give you a colourful throw pillow.”

It's an incredibly odd request but, somehow, so  _ Magnus _ that Alec thinks he’ll probably end up ridiculously fond of whatever weird cushion gets given to him.

“Okay,” he agrees easily.  “Um, food’s ready any minute.  I'd say we could eat out on the balcony, but, y’know -- it's December.”

And it would be a crying shame to cover up the slight hints of Magnus’s skin that are visible through his thin half-open shirt with something so boring as a coat.

“A shame,” Magnus agrees, but doesn't look too put out as he journeys back across the room to stand by Alec again.  Very close, this time.  He smells amazing and Alec is dizzy.  “I suppose you'll have to make sure you invite me back in the summer months.”

It’s ridiculous.  This is their first date, they've only known each other for a month, and Magnus is talking like it’s a given that they'll still be seeing each other half a year from now.  What's far more ridiculous is how much Alec hopes that turns out to be true.”

“Uh,” he says.  “Sure.  D'you want a drink?”

It's supposed to be an excuse to flee and blush in private for a moment, but Magnus follows him to the kitchen.  Alec pours a glass of wine for Magnus and some sparkling water for himself.

“Do they not let you pro athletes drink?” Magnus asks as he sips his wine, leaning with one hip checked against the counter, his body so elegant and lithe that Alec’s feeling more and more flustered as he checks the oven.  

“Most of the guys drink,” he says, shrugging a bit. “Some of them drink a lot.  I only have any alcohol in the off-season, though.”

It's more a superstitious thing than a health thing, by this point, but from October to whenever-they-get-knocked-out-of-the-playoffs, Alec abstains from anything more alcoholic than his dentist-recommended mouthwash.

Alec usually eats dinner on the couch while he watches tape, but tonight he's actually bothered to set up the little dining table he has sat in the open-plan space just off the kitchen, so that's where he leads Magnus when their food’s ready.  The table’s square with a chair on each side, and Magnus chooses the one directly across from Alec.  Alec's legs are long enough that their knees are pressed together under the table, and just that tiny bit of contact makes him fumble with his fork.

“I don't have any candles, or -- or flowers or anything.” He gives an apologetic shrug to the bare wood of the table.  “I would have put them out if I did.”

“The fact that you cooked for me is plenty romantic on its own, don't fret,” says Magnus, grinning wide and looking like he means it.  “This smells delicious.”

Alec’s only made a simple gnocchi tomato bake, so he thinks Magnus is probably overpleased with it, but the compliment makes him blush all the same.

Alec expects it to be awkward when they start eating.  Expects that he won’t know what to say, that they’ll be plagued by awkward silences and aborted moments of eye contact and that he’ll be cursing his own inability to socialise in his head the whole time.  But it turns out he doesn’t need to worry at all.  Magnus carries on the conversation easily, his words flowing and his questions easy and everything about him absolutely charming, as always.

He asks a bit about hockey, but doesn’t really linger on the mechanics of the job at all.  Instead he asks all his questions through the frame of emotion, connection -- he asks when Alec started playing hockey (since he was old enough to be propped up on skates), if his dad played too (yes, for five years, and he’s been coaching major teams since then), when Alec knew he wanted to do it as a career (he’s never really considered doing anything else).  Alec doesn’t usually have much space to talk about how he  _ feels  _ about hockey, and he surprises himself by actually really enjoying the chance.  Izzy’s the only one who ever talks to him about anything emotional, usually, but it’s always about his love life so he tends to shut her down immediately.  Talking to Magnus, though -- it feels different.  It feels like Alec wants to tell him all these things.

“Is your sister a hockey player too?” Magnus asks at one point, when Alec’s up getting them more drinks.  Wine for Magnus again, another sparkling water for himself, and he nearly spills them both when he has to stop and laugh at the question.

“Oh, no, Izzy’s getting her masters in Biology.  She can barely even stand up in skates.”  She’d been subjected to just as many skating lessons as him when she was a kid, but for some reason, it never became her thing.  She’s actually a bit of a hazard when strapped to a pair of blades and let loose.  “She’s the most cutthroat fan you’ll ever meet, though.  She comes to every single one of our home games dressed head to toe in Blades merch and screams so loud she loses her voice and refuses to sit in the family box because she likes getting into fights with all the other team’s supporters in the crowd.  I think she’s knocked out more teeth than I have.”

Magnus grins, wide, as Alec hands him his wine.  
  
“She sounds fabulous.  You still haven’t introduced me to her, you know.”

“Trust me, I’m trying to avoid that day for as long as possible,” Alec grumbles.  He takes another bite of food and swallows it before he continues, “She’s a nightmare.  I love her, but if she finds out I’m dating you, she’ll never leave either of us alone again.  She’s very invested in my love life.”

“I’m sure she just wants you to be happy,” Magnus offers, gesturing a little with his wine glass.  Alec is momentarily captivated by the twinkling rings on his hand.  
  
“Uh, yeah,” he says, forgetting for a moment what he’s agreeing with.  “I mean -- yeah, she does.  I don’t mind, really.  She’s just being a sister.”

There’s a beat of silence, but not awkward silence, while Magnus sips his wine, and then he says:

“So.  We’re dating?”

Alec blushes bright red.  
  
“Oh, I mean -- I, uh, I only meant, not like  _ that  _ but --”

“Alexander,” Magnus interrupts him fondly.  “Relax.  I was only teasing.  I would very much like us to be dating, you know.  As far as I know, we’re technically on a date right now.”

He leans a little over the table and looks right into Alec’s eyes, grinning playfully and wickedly in a way that makes Alec’s heart catch.  He can’t help but smile back while he tries to find his breath.

“Yeah.”  He can’t look away from Magnus’s deep brown eyes, feels like he’s almost being hypnotised by them, and his throat is suddenly dry.  When Alec finally looks away to grab his water and take a big gulp, the severing of their eye contact seems to snap a tension in the room Alec hadn’t even realised was building.  He takes a deep breath.  His apartment feels too warm; is the thermostat broken?  “Uh, so, do you have siblings?”  

Changing the subject seems good.  Magnus has never mentioned any when they’ve talked, but then Magnus has never actually mentioned any of his family at all.  It’s a fairly innocuous question, or at least Alec thinks it is, but when he asks Magnus gets a funny look on his face for a moment and Alec is suddenly terrified he’s brought up something he shouldn’t have.

“Or, you don’t have to tell me, that’s fine too, we can talk about something else if you just give me a --”

“Oh, no, it’s okay.”  Magnus reaches over and touches his fingertips to the back of Alec’s hand where it’s resting on the table, just idly, brushing them over Alec’s knuckles with a thoughtful expression on his face.  Alec suddenly feels so much like he’s on fire that he almost misses Magnus’s response.  “I suppose I could have some half siblings out there, since I never met my father.  But I’ve never had a close family, and I went into the foster system when I was ten.  Even if I do have biological relatives out there, I don’t know what I’d do about it.  They would never be family to me the way your siblings are to you.”

Oh.  Not what he’d been expecting to hear.  Alec takes a deep breath, turns his hand over on the table, and intertwines his fingers with Magnus’s.

“That must have been tough,” he says.

For a moment, Magnus just stares down at their joined hands on the table, but he doesn’t make any move at all to pull away.

“It was better than staying with my stepfather, trust me.”  Magnus gives him a smile, and it’s genuine, not tinged with pain for as far as Alec can see -- rather just soft and a little sad, but the kind of sad that has years behind it.  “My teenage years were a little rough, admittedly, but I have an amazing life now, so I can’t really complain about anything that got me here.”

Alec thinks Magnus must be really, really strong, to have turned out as amazing as he clearly has.  

“I’m really glad things got better for you.”

Magnus smiles a little wider, twining their hands tighter together.

“Thank you.  It was hard work, of course.  But now I have lovely close friends, even if some of them are a nightmare sometimes, and I have my own business, I get to spend most of my days either sleeping, drinking or scouring beautiful vintage stores--” His smile widens even more -- “Not to mention, I’m apparently dating a rather gorgeous professional athlete.”

Blood rushes into Alec’s cheeks.  He’s been called  _ gorgeous  _ by magazines, fans on twitter, interviewers, but somehow hearing Magnus say it like this, so genuinely and flirtatiously, feels entirely different.

“Shut up,” he says, though it probably doesn’t sound very threatening since he’s smiling now too.  “Uh.”  He’s lost his train of thought.  “I’ll just clean this up.”

They both finished their food at some point in the conversation without Alec even noticing it, and Magnus’s glass is empty as well.  Pulling his hand away from Magnus’s is almost a physical strain, and Alec has to swallow hard as he starts gathering up their plates just to stop the weird feeling that’s telling him to fall right back into Magnus’s orbit.

“Thank you for that delicious dinner, Alexander,” Magnus says, standing up to help clear the table.

“You don’t have to do that,” Alec protests, but Magnus doesn’t listen to him, and together they pile everything up by the sink.  When they’re done with that, Magnus goes out again but doesn’t head back to the table, instead crossing the room and dropping down onto the couch with his mostly-full wine glass in hand.  Alec, content to let him take the lead, follows.

Sitting on the couch together somehow seems much more intimate than sitting at the table had, even though they’d been looking right at each other with their faces only a couple of feet apart.  The couch is different because there’s nothing between them, and though Alec leaves a bit of space buffering their bodies when he joins Magnus, it’s only air.  Either of them could move through it at any second if they wanted to.

Alec doesn’t know how to do this part.  He hadn’t really known what he was doing the rest of the date, either, but at least he had a frame of reference.  He’s been out on dinner dates with a fair few girls.  It’s just that when you go  _ out  _ to dinner, you’re  _ out,  _ and when the meal ends you can both head home.  But right now they’ve finished their meal and they’re at Alec’s apartment, and Magnus shows no signs of wanting to leave.

Is he waiting for Alec to say something?  Does Magnus want to leave but is just trying to be polite?  Or is this some regular part of dating, a post-food chat on the couch, and Magnus will gracefully bow out of the apartment in a half hour or something?

Or -- maybe, just maybe, Magnus is just as reluctant to end the night as Alec is.

Whatever the reason, Alec finds himself glad for it, even if it’s all wrapped up in a bundle of awkwardness from the fact that he doesn’t know how to proceed.  But just like in everything else so far, Magnus takes the lead, and Alec is content to follow him along.  Magnus tucks his feet up under himself on the couch, holds his wine in one hand, and starts telling Alec about the month he spent backpacking through Peru with two of his old friends.  It’s a wicked tale and Magnus tells it with a kind of vibrant animation that makes Alec feel almost like he’s really there, every word captivating him.

“That sounds a lot more fun than what I was doing back then,” Alec tells him with a grin when the story finally ends -- dramatically, with the three of them practically getting kicked out of the country.

“Your mistake there was going to college,” Magnus teases him.  Honestly, he probably has a point there.  College is great for people like Izzy, Alec knows, but it had never meant much to him.  He shrugs at Magnus.

“I honestly only went to play NCAA hockey.  Me and Jace picked the same school so we could play on the same team, that was as far as my concerns went.”

“What did you major in?” Magnus asks, actually sounding interested.  Alec wrinkles his nose at the memory.

“English.  It wasn’t my thing at  _ all,  _ but coach told us to just pick the easiest majors we could so we’d have more time for hockey.  Half the team were in the humanities department.”   
  
Magnus laughs loudly, and then drinks a little more wine.

“Come on now, I’m sure English is a great degree.  Didn’t you like it?”

“I liked the reading,” Alec admits.  “I don’t get a lot of time to read during hockey season, but back then I didn’t have a choice if I wanted to pass all my classes, so I had to make time for it.  That was good for me, I think.  I’ve always liked books.”

Magnus looks him up and down for a moment, almost appraisingly, and Alec shifts on the couch, feeling oddly exposed.

“Books are wonderful,” Magnus agrees.  “You should see the size of the bookshelves in my apartment -- they’re bursting at the seams.  I actually have a few you might like to borrow.  You could take one with you the next time you have to go out of town for a game.  It’d be like having our own private book club.”   
  
Alec finds himself grinning.  He thinks he probably couldn’t deny Magnus anything.

“That sounds fun.”

Their eyes meet, and again, Alec feels like his heart is going out of rhythm.  His fluster must show on his face because Magnus raises an eyebrow knowingly, just as he drains the last of his wine and sets the glass down.  Alec can feel himself blushing and takes the opportunity to escape for a moment.

“I’ll get you another drink,” he says quickly, scooping up the abandoned glass and fleeing to the kitchen.  Of course, his apartment is open plan, so Magnus can still  _ see  _ him, but at least when he’s not looking right into Magnus’s beautiful eyes from inches away, Alec can actually breathe.

Except as soon as he gets back to the couch, he’s breathless again.  Alec passes Magnus the refilled glass of wine he hadn’t asked for, but Magnus just leans over and sets it right down on the coffee table, and then scoots a little closer to Alec on the couch.  One of his legs is still tucked up under his body, and his floaty red shirt is baring a wide swathe of his chest, and his eyes are sparkling in the dim light, and he looks more beautiful than anyone in the world should have a right to.  
  
“Alexander,” Magnus says, his voice breathy and low in a way that makes Alec’s skin tingle.  “I’m going to ask if I can kiss you now.”   
  
Alec swallows, hard.

“Okay,” he chokes out.

So Magnus leans forwards, drapes his arms around Alec’s neck, and brings their mouths together.  For a moment Alec can’t even notice the sensation, because he’s too busy freaking out in his own mind about how much he  _ wants  _ this, and how good Magnus smells and how amazing he is and how Alec is already too deep into whatever the hell they have going on between them --

And then he processes the feeling of Magnus’s lips on his, and all thoughts leave his mind.

It’s heaven.  The kiss is simple to start with, all chaste and nothing more than the warmth of their mouths pressed together, but it’s clear neither of them really want that.  Magnus shifts a little closer, one of his knees tucking up over Alec’s legs, and Alec lets his hands wind around Magnus’s back, and all of a sudden they’re kissing proper.  

They stay like that for what could be minutes or a lot longer, and just when Alec is beginning to feel like he's forgotten how to breathe, Magnus suddenly shoves at his chest.  It sends him falling backwards onto the couch, and Magnus quickly follows so he’s draped along the whole line of Alec’s body.  He’s half hard already, Alec can feel the weight of it on his hip, and it makes him feel a whole lot better about how desperately turned on he is himself.  He lets his hands slip down to Magnus’s ass, feeling daring, pulls him in closer and hitches their bodies together, sucking hard on Magnus’s lips to hide a groan when the movement has them rubbing against each other. 

Alec has never felt this turned on just from kissing someone, all their clothes still on and everything, and he feels like he’s losing his mind.  He keeps one hand grabbing at Magnus’s ass as Magnus writhes above him, the other sneaking up to wind its way into Magnus’s hair and pull at it.  Magnus gasps into his mouth at that, and it’s the hottest sound Alec’s ever heard.

A moment later Magnus drags their lips apart, and Alec can’t help the desperate sound that escapes him.  He prays Magnus isn’t going to say they need to slow down or that he needs to leave, because Alec might explode if he has to go jerk off in his shower right now with nothing but the memory of Magnus’s perfect body pressed all against him.  But Magnus doesn’t say any of that.

“Fuck, what do you want to do?” He sounds wrecked, his voice low and weak, his lips all kiss-swollen and damp when he talks.  Alec drags him back down by his hair.

“Anything,” Alec gasps out.  “Everything.”

“I don’t usually have sex on the first date,” Magnus tells him, even as he’s shoving a hand between them and tugging at Alec’s shirt so hard it nearly rips.  He sounds rather reproachful.  Like its  _ Alec’s _ fault Magnus jumped him.

“I don’t usually have first dates,” Alec says, and kisses him harder.  

After that it seems like they can barely stop kissing for a second.  Magnus tugs Alec’s shirt off and eventually loses his own, too, and the feeling of their bare chests pressed together with Magnus’s necklaces between sends Alec spiralling even further into his pit of desperate arousal.

“Bed,” he manages to gasp out, gripping Magnus hard by the hips and trying to push him up.

“I don’t want to move,” Magnus replies, circling his arms tighter around Alec’s neck and shoving his hips down right as Alec sits up, grinding their dicks together perfectly.  They both moan, and Alec latches onto Magnus’s neck to try and stifle his sounds as well as the sensation, lest all of this be over before it’s even fucking begun.  He sucks hard at Magnus’s throat, and Magnus is gonna have a hickey but Alec can’t bring himself to care at all as Magnus starts grinding down against him again, building up the pace as he circles his hips, gasping to himself.

Alec can’t take it, but his couch is too small to get anything good done, so he lets out a silent thanks to every second he’s ever spent in the gym and just grips Magnus harder by the ass, stands up with Magnus still all twined around him.

“ _ Fuck,”  _ Magnus exclaims, hitching his legs properly around Alec’s hips.  Like this his ass is right on top of Alec’s cock and Alec feels weak at the knees from the pleasure of it all, stumbling as he tries to both move them through the room and kiss Magnus harder than he’s ever kissed anyone in his life at the same time.

His bedroom’s the first door, thank the universe, and Alec shoves inside it, dropping Magnus down right into the middle of his bed and crawling on top of him.

“You are so hot,” he says without really meaning to, and Magnus actually looks like he’s blushing for a moment.  He recovers quickly, though, and shoves his hands between them, tugging down the zipper of Alec’s jeans so hard it nearly rips.  Then he’s pushing Alec’s jeans down over his ass, and Alec sits up a little just to push them the rest of the way down and then kick them the rest of the way off, leaving him in just his boxer-briefs.  Magnus cups his erection through the fabric for a moment and Alec has to close his eyes, choke back a moan, just to stop himself from giving in and fucking Magnus’s hand until he comes right there.

He gets himself back under control, though, because he  _ really  _ wants to suck Magnus’s dick.  It’s all he can think about.  He moves away from Magnus’s glorious hand and instead works Magnus’s ridiculously tight pants off in a matter of seconds.

Magnus isn’t wearing any underwear.  He’s suddenly laid completely bare, an ocean of smooth tan skin smattered only with silver jewellery around his neck and hands, and his dick is dark red and swollen and straining against his stomach.

Alec’s mouth is watering.  He shuffles down the bed, lays on his stomach with his legs splayed so he’s not falling off, and without any teasing or fanfare, fits his lips around the head of Magnus’s dick.

Magnus gasps and his hips rocket off the bed, but Alec pushes them back down with one hand and keeps them pinned, just loose enough for Magnus to keep squirming against the sheets.  He sucks lightly on the tip of Magnus’s dick, running his tongue around the edge of the foreskin, and lets his free hand trail up the soft inside of Magnus’s thighs, scratching at them gently before coming up to tug on his balls.

Magnus’s hands fly to Alec’s hair, twisting in it tightly but not trying to push his head, and Alec ducks down further onto Magnus’s cock.  For a few minutes he just stays like that, idly tugging on Magnus’s balls and letting his tongue explore 

“Alexander,” Magnus gasps above him, writhing against the bed and tugging harder at Alec’s hair.  Alec can’t help but let out a little choked moan, stifled around Magnus’s dick, and Magnus hums appreciatively.  “Oh, do you like that?”

He tugs at Alec’s hair again, and Alec  _ does  _ like it, fuck does he like it, and fuck does he like having Magnus’s dick in his mouth, lapping up the soft skin and letting the taste of the bitter precome coat his tongue and slide down his throat.  Alec suddenly feels frantic for his own relief, and shifts against the sheets, trying to rub off his own aching cock as well.

It’s not enough friction to really get him off but Alec feels desperate, keeps grinding his hips down against the bed relentlessly as he starts to set a rhythm on Magnus’s cock, bobbing up and down as far as he can go, swallowing around the soft head, working the base of him with one hand.  As his rhythm on Magnus gets faster, so does his own frantic humping against the mattress.  He sucks on Magnus harder, pulls almost all the way off and pushes his tongue into the slit, lapping up the beads of precome, before sinking back down as far as he can and starting to bob his head frantically.  

“Alec, Alec,  _ fuck,  _ Alexander, right there, oh right there oh fuck Alec,” Magnus is chanting above him, and Alec’s neck is starting to ache but he barely notices, going faster and faster until finally Magnus yanks at his hair and gasps out a warning and then his whole body is tensing and bowing off the bed and --

A gush of hot come fills Alec’s mouth, and he moans as he swallows it down, keeps up the relentless motion of his mouth until Magnus is done coming and collapses back onto the bed, boneless, his dick spent.  Alec gulps hard around him one more time, mostly to swallow the come in his mouth but also to see the way it makes Magnus shudder in a sensitive little aftershock.

Alec gives Magnus a moment to come down, but he can’t stop working his own hips against the bed, only craving his own orgasm more now that he can taste Magnus’s come in his mouth.  Magnus doesn’t take long to recover and notice Alec’s situation, thankfully, and pulls him back up the bed so they’re lying close again.  Alec feels an immediate loss the second he stops grinding onto the mattress, his cock achingly hard and throbbing with every heartbeat -- he immediately shoves his hand against it so he can work against his palm, but Magnus bats his hand away.  Alec lets out a groan that’s almost closer to a sob.

“Come here,” Magnus says, tugging Alec hard against his body and kissing him.  Alec’s erection is pressed up against Magnus’s hip and it’s relief for a moment, but then Magnus pushes him away again, rolling Alec over onto his back.  

Alec feels like his whole brain has been taken over by his need to come.  His hips keep working up into the air even with nothing to rut against, and he lets his hands fall over his face, gasping into his palms.  Not being able to see only makes the feelings more intense, and a moment later Magnus’s hand is closing around his dick, jerking him off at a quick pace.  He’s still wearing his rings and there’s a couple of points where cool metal contrasts the hot slick heat of Magnus’s hand, and it’s fucking  _ amazing,  _ it’s sending tingles all the way up Alec’s spine and his hips pushing up off the bed, trying to get back into the tight grip of Magnus’s fist every time he pulls it away, working Alec tightly, pulling his foreskin up and down over the head.

Then all of a sudden Magnus’s soft wet lips are closing over just the head of Alec’s dick as he keeps jerking him off, and Alec’s whole brain whites out.

Magnus,” he calls out, half a warning and half a praise.  “Oh, Magnus, fuck, I’m not going to last, sorry, I’m gonna --”

Alec’s orgasm starts as a wave of fire in his toes and floods through his whole body in an instant, culminating in a white hot heat all around his dick as he shoots into Magnus’s mouth.  He doesn’t have enough mental faculties left to be embarrassed about lasting five seconds, just keeps desperately fucking up into Magnus’s hand and the tight circle of his lips, his orgasm stretching on for timeless long seconds as spurts of his come paint Magnus’s lips.

When the last of his trembling aftershocks finally subside, Alec collapses back onto the bed with a gasp, his whole body feeling spent.  Magnus appears at his side a moment later, grinning as he licks his lips, and Alec finds himself grinning back.  He winds an arm around Magnus’s neck and draws him down for a slow, filthy kiss.

It’s weird being able to taste his own come, but also incredibly hot.  Alec thinks he’d probably be able to go for round two if he didn’t know how early he has to get up tomorrow morning.  So he doesn’t let the kiss last too long and tempt him; he pulls away and rests their foreheads together instead, unable to resist a chance to look into Magnus’s beautiful eyes.

“Well that was hot,” says Magnus, and Alec laughs.  He’s not wrong there.  
  
Magnus looks really --  _ happy.   _ Which makes Alec happy.  Alec has had sex technically better than this -- sex which lasted longer, sex where he came more times, sex with more positions and advanced sexual acts.  But he’s not actually sure he’s ever had sex that made him  _ feel  _ this good before.

“This wasn’t just a hookup, right?” he checks, his heart thumping too fast.  It feels odd to even ask but he suddenly has to know.  Magnus taps him on the chest reproachfully.

“Well I certainly hope not,” Magnus says.  “I have it on good authority that we’re  _ dating.” _

They fall asleep tangled up together that night, and the next morning, Alec wakes up before his alarm even goes off, with Magnus curled tight around his back.  It’s so nice that he can barely convince himself to move.

He wakes Magnus up with kisses, and is almost late to morning skate for the first time in his career.

\-----

The next day, Alec has to leave on another roadie.  They’re gone for four days and play three games; not only do they win them all, but Alec scores two points in every game, two goals and four assists.  Everyone’s looking at him with amused eyes the whole time, and it’s awful.

“Y’know, in four whole years, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Lighty this relaxed,” Burner jokes in the locker room after their third game.  “Did you get laid?”

Brownie laughs at that, and reaches over to clap Alec on the shoulder.  Alec’s still mostly naked and doesn’t particularly appreciate the contact.

“Only explanation. Lydia must’ve made you  _ very  _ happy while we were home.” 

Alec rolls his eyes at all of them, and pulls his clothes on, but he doesn't deny anything they're saying.  He never was very good at lying, after all.

The day they get back to New York, he sees Magnus again.  They end up making out in the back of his store and then going to get tacos.  After that, they both seem to silently agree that they want to see each other whenever they can. 

So they go on lots more dates, somehow managing to work around Alec’s relentless schedule, and they have a lot more sex which only gets more amazing each time, and Alec keeps playing games better and better, and the Blades keep winning, and it seems a little impossible that things are actually going this  _ well _ for once.  
  
Within the space of three weeks, Alec feels a little disappointed every time he has to curl up in his own bed without Magnus there to keep him warm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELL THEN
> 
> leave a comment in exchange for my eternal love!! also i wrote most of this on my phone and while i've tried to proof it thoroughly, there's a high chance some weird autocorrects might have slipped through, so lemme know if you see any!
> 
> up tomorrow in 'january': dates with magnus, dates with lydia, chats with izzy, and a bit of switching it up ;)  
>    
> [my tumblr!](http://milominderbindered.tumblr.com)


	4. Chapter Four: January

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wrote this fic over the combination of about 4 gdocs and 3 notebooks, and consolidating all the chapters i turning out to be slightly chaotic! sorry this is a day late!
> 
> there's not such descriptive smut in this chap but if you wanna skip sex altogether, skip out the paragraph near the end that begins 'It’s just as good as Alec knew it would be'. and then start on line two of the next paragraph ^_^
> 
> thanks so much to all you AMAZING LOVELY ANGELS who are commenting and kudosing and making my life generally lovely ♥︎

Alec spends the couple of days break they get for Christmas in an awkward weekend at his parents' house with Jace and Izzy, and then before he knows it the Blades are on the road again and the year is drawing to a close.  They have an away game on December 31st, and he gets back exactly an hour before midnight.  He doesn’t even go home from the airport.  He’s exhausted and has bruises blooming on his side from a rough check and he has to be up early tomorrow and he still has his suitcase with him, but he ignores all that, and gives his cab driver Magnus’s address.

Magnus is having a raging New Year’s party, because he’s Magnus so of  _ course  _ he is, but the chaos actually works out in Alec’s favour.  Everyone’s far too intoxicated and hyped by the holiday to care about some famous hockey player shoving a suitcase into the closet and making his way to Magnus’s room, if they even know who he is to begin with.  Magnus doesn’t exactly run with a sporty crowd -- more like the Brooklyn Hipster crowd.

Magnus isn’t in his room when Alec gets in there, but he follows a moment later, clearly only having seen the door shut.

“My room’s off limits!  You had better not be fucking in -- Alec?”

Alec grins.  Magnus only ever calls him  _ Alec _ when he's being serious or surprised.

“I know you probably need to be out there hosting, but I wanted to give you your New Year’s kiss,” he says.  Magnus grins and bounces over, flings his arms around around Alec's neck and tries to go in for a kiss, but Alec stops him.  "Hey, it's not midnight yet, wait a couple of minutes."

Magnus rolls his eyes, but pulls his head back.  He keeps his arms around Alec's neck and their bodies pressed together though.

“I couldn’t watch all of your game because people started turning up, but I got the alerts on my phone -- that NHL app is awfully handy,” Magnus says.  Alec doesn't have the app but that's just because he doesn't get on well with technology.  “Well done on the win!  And assisting on three goals!”

Alec can't help but laugh.  Sometimes it's painfully obvious how new hockey terms are on Magnus’s lips.

“It's called getting an assist,” he says, though he supposed it's obviously the same thing so the correction doesn't really matter.  “You're cute.”

Outside, the mass of drunk party goers start to chant in unison.   _ Ten, nine, eight _ .  Magnus pulls their bodies closer together.   _ Seven, six, five _ .  Alec wraps his arms tight around Magnus’s waist.   _ Four, three, two  _ \--

“Happy New Year,” Alec whispers.

_ One _ .

They kiss.

It's not a particularly long kiss or a particularly deep kiss or a particularly passionate kiss.  But somehow Alec feels like it's significant.  That it means something for them to ring in the year this way.

“Mm,” hums Magnus, pulling away but not opening his eyes for a moment.  “Isn't there some old myth that the way you start the year is how you'll spend the rest of it?  If so I thoroughly approve of this one already.”

He's grinning.  Alec laughs.  Outside a voice yells  _ has anyone seen Magnus? _ and the spell is shattered; they move apart, but even when Alec’s retreated a few feet across the room, he can still feel the warmth of Magnus’s body pressed against him.

“Stay for the rest of the party?” Magnus asks.  There's a hint of vulnerability in the question, the kind Magnus usually never shows, and Alec feels kind of blessed to see it.  “We can just say you're a friend.”

Alec really wishes they didn't have to -- wishes he could be introduced as Magnus’s boyfriend, or the guy he's dating, or  whatever .  He also knows he should be getting home and going to sleep and getting up early for practice tomorrow, but screw it.  Half the team are probably gonna be hungover tomorrow.  It won't matter if Alec’s a little bit tired.

“Of course,” he agrees, and Magnus beams, flits across the room for another quick kiss before they separate and brave the party again.

Alec awkwardly meets a lot of Magnus’s friends, and tries not to make it too obvious that he's following at Magnus’s heels the whole night, and later, much later, when everyone's gone, they have half exhausted, half champagne-tipsy sex, and fall asleep in Magnus’s big bed all curled together. 

It's the best start to a year Alec has ever had. 

\-----

On the 16th, Alec has a date.  It’s with his second-favourite person to have dates with these days -- Lydia.  

And it’s not even a  _ date  _ date.  It’s not like the dinners in low-lit but public restaurants that PR set up for them, which always make Alec feel like he’s shifting in his own skin the whole night, awkward and uncomfortable.  This is a benefit for a charity that Lydia set up, getting young girls from disadvantaged areas of New York into youth hockey programs.  It’s a really good cause.  She does a ton of charity work but this one is her baby, and he always tries to support it as much as he can.

It’s just that he wishes he could be here as her friend.  That she didn’t have to kiss his cheek whenever a camera was turned on them.  That maybe even he could have brought  _ Magnus  _ as his date for the night, because Magnus would love all these fancy appetisers and flutes of champagne and the excuse to dress up in outfits that cost more than most people’s cars.

“Would you at least  _ try _ to look like you're having a good time?” Lydia hisses under her breath as she swoops back to their table, passing him another drink.  She smiles at some famous sportscaster passing them, links her arm through Alec’s.

“Sorry,” he says, taking a sip of his drink.  He and Lydia are both drinking non-alcoholic sparkling cider out of champagne glasses, which feels a little ridiculous, but he's at least glad she has the same philosophy as him about drinking during the season.  They really are too similar sometimes.  “And I am having a good time.  Your speech was great.”

“Don't lie.  I know everyone hates long speeches at these things.  I'm hoping people will donate more to try and get me to shut up.”

She smiles at him, and Alec lets out a little laugh.

“I mean it,” he insists, and he does.  Lydia, like Alec, can come across a little abrasive.  She's all-business when it comes to hockey and she doesn't talk about much else if given the choice.  But when she really cares about something it completely shines out of her, and she _really_ cares about this cause, so watching her explain it to a room full of appetiser-stuffed sports personalities is something to witness.  “I don't know about everyone else, but  _ I'm _ gonna donate.”

She rolls her eyes, and then looks at him, like she can see right through his skin to the restlessness underneath.  Alec isn't usually so annoyed about these events; they're basically part of his job, and the food's good, and his friends are there -- though Jace is off flirting with some reporter in the smoking area at the moment.  But tonight all he can think about is Magnus.

“Okay, what is it?” There's suspicion in her tone. “You've been acting weird all night.  You have to tell me, I'm your only friend who isn't related to you."

“That's not true,” he protests, although it really kind of is, which is sad. He straightens his back a little more, trying to look normal. 

Lydia squints her eyes at him for one long moment.  Then she gasps.

“You met someone!” she accuses in a whisper.  Alec starts.  No way could it be that obvious.  

“Would you keep your voice down?” he hisses, looking around to check nobody’s near them, but they're stood at a table in the corner kind of away from the crowd, so it seems pretty safe.

“Tell me about him, come on.” She’s quiet but absolutely insistent.  Alec knows he shouldn't, the less people who know about him and Magnus the safer it is and they're still in a crowded room full of people who know exactly who he is and could probably make their pension off selling a story about his sexuality.  But he can't quite resist.

“He's instagram famous and runs a vintage store and wears a lot of glitter and knows absolutely nothing about hockey,” he says wryly.  Lydia’s eyes widen.

“That is not what I was expecting."  She pauses.  "He sounds great.”

“You were expecting someone not great?”

She ignores that.  “Do you love him?”

Alec's mind reels for a moment.

“I -- we’ve only been dating for a month,” he protests.  “It's really new.”  Lydia just keeps looking at him with her steady, probing gaze.  Eventually he adds, “I like him a lot.”

Lydia leans in a little closer and wraps her arm around his waist.  It takes him a moment to realise there's a photographer angled towards them across the room.  She doesn't let on that she's noticed, though, just keeps staring up at Alec.

“I am so happy for you,” she says.

Alec leans down and kisses her cheek just as the camera goes off.

\-----

The next week, Alec wakes up in bed with Magnus, as is so often the case these days.  Magnus is still fast asleep, his arms sprawled out and his mouth hanging open, drooling a little into the pillow -- Alec snaps a quick photo on his phone to tease him with later, and then gets up to go for a run.

It's weird to think that he has a set running route outside Magnus’s apartment these days.  That's how many mornings he wakes up there.  He takes the forty minute route around the block, watching the early morning bustle of the city waking up around him, not thinking about anything but the cold air against his face and the pounding of his feet against the concrete.

When he gets back, Magnus is still asleep.   Alec sheds his sweaty running gear and has a quick shower to rinse off.  Then he puts on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt from the half-a-shelf in Magnus’s overstuffed closet that has become  _ his _ .  Alec’s still not sure how his life got to the stage where he’s keeping spare clothes at his boyfriend's place, but he's not complaining.

Alec makes coffee and a smoothie and settles down on the couch to watch the morning news on ESPN.  That occupies him for a while, and then he picks up a book and reads until the clock strikes ten and Magnus finally emerges from the bedroom.

“Morning, sleeping beauty,” Alec says, hopping off the couch to go and kiss him.

“This is early!” Magnus insists.  Alec just laughs. 

Over the course of the last month and a half, this has become Alec's favourite kind of day.  And blessedly, he doesn't even have to go to the rink today; it's a Sunday and their next game is still two days away and the team’s in really good shape, so Coach has given everyone except the rookies a day off.  And Magnus usually has employees running his store for him except on Saturdays and the occasional afternoon -- hence why he never seems to have to wake up early -- so the two of them have nothing they need to do except spend the day together.

Alec’s always considered himself kind of a loner, or antisocial, or whatever, so it’s surprising to him just how much he looks forward to not having  _ any  _ time to himself lately.  Whenever he's not at practice or a game, all he wants to do is be surrounded by Magnus; he’s even gone out in big groups with some of Magnus’s friends a couple of times, or been here while Magnus throws one of the big parties he loves so much.  Being just the two of them is perfect for today, but any time spent around Magnus is actually okay with Alec.

So of course, because the universe loves to be difficult, it ends up being the day of their first fight.

Okay, so maybe  _ fight  _ is a little bit of an exaggeration -- but not much.  Everything starts out wonderful, like always.  Alec makes protein pancakes for breakfast, which he eats with banana and which Magnus smothers in chocolate sauce.  Then Magnus puts on a couple of fancy outfits and makes Alec take pictures of him for his Instagram.  Then Magnus changes back out of the fancy outfits and somewhere between taking those clothes off and putting new clothes on again, he gets distracted, and Alec ends up pinning him back in bed and making out with him for an hour.  Then they go back out to the living room and Alec picks up his book again and Magnus settles down on the floor with his laptop propped open in front of him.

And then it starts.

Magnus loves googling things.  This is something Alec had learned about him rather quickly.  Magnus searches his own name practically every day, just to see if anything new has been mentioned about his store or his Instagram, and to revel in the fact that he is well known enough for there to be a  _ fuckyeahmagnusbane  _ tumblr account.  But since they started dating, he’s picked up the habit of doing the same thing with Alec.  About three times a week Alec gets a text from Magnus informing him of some new article Alec didn’t even know about, or some new rumour that he will never understand the origins of if he lives a thousand years.  It’s usually pretty amusing.

Today, though, Magnus opens up his laptop and _tap tap taps_ , and Alec can see enough of the screen to see that it’s his name being searched.  And a moment later, Magnus is looking thoroughly unhappy.

“What’s wrong?” Alec asks, immediately tensing and closing his book.  Is there some horrible post about him, or bad news he hasn’t heard yet?  Magnus tilts the screen towards him, and Alec sees that the first image that comes up under his name is the one of him and Lydia at her benefit from last week -- her arm around him, him kissing her cheek.

“I hate that picture,” Magnus tells him, dragging the laptop back around a little too forcefully to be casual and closing the browser.

Alec feels a low flush of shame hit him.  Magnus hadn’t said anything when the pictures came out last week, but he’d seen them.  Alec had just assumed Magnus was as detached about it all as Alec was by this point.

“I’m -- I’m sorry.”  It sounds a little pathetic even to his own ears.  “You know I don’t have a choice.”

Magnus rolls over so he’s laying on his back on the carpet, not looking at Alec, and huffs.

“There’s a difference between having a  _ bad  _ choice and having  _ no  _ choice, Alexander.”  His tone sends a little shiver down Alec’s spine.  He’s heard Magnus sound disdainful before, but never towards  _ him.   _ “I don’t understand why you need a beard, anyway.  I’m sure Lydia is perfectly lovely, but there's such a thing as single straight guys, you know.  Plenty of your teammates are single and nobody seems to be interrogating  _ them  _ about it -- so I’m not sure what you’re afraid of.”

Alec’s heart is thumping.  He’d been hoping he wouldn’t ever have to have this conversation with Magnus; it’s not something he likes talking about at all.

“Lydia is great,” he agrees.  “I know that’s not the point, but she is.  And pretending to be together works out really well for both of us.  Yeah, some of the guys on my team are single, but they also go out and hook up with girls at bars and have ex-girlfriends and talk about women and they aren’t --  _ questionable.   _ But I am.  Questionable.  Any of my past classmates can say that I didn’t date in high school or college, and anyone on my college team can say that I spent a suspicious amount of time in hotel rooms with our right winger Derek.  If I’m single, people will constantly be expecting me to  _ get  _ a girlfriend, and making assumptions when I don’t.  So if it seems like I’m with Lydia -- it’s all just so much easier, Magnus.  You know it’s not real and I know it’s not real and she knows it’s not real.  Doesn’t that make sense?”

Magnus is silent for a few long, long moments.  He’s still staring up at the ceiling, not looking at Alec at all.

“You worry so much, Alexander,” Magnus finally says.  His voice doesn’t sound argumentative at all, actually rather soft, but his next words startle Alec regardless. “It can’t ever be as bad as you think it will be.”

Alec actually doesn’t know what to say to that.

“Are you trying to tell me professional sports aren’t homophobic?”  He waits a moment but Magnus doesn’t say anything else.  “Seriously, Magnus, I know you haven’t been into hockey until really recently, but you  _ can’t  _ be that ignorant.”

“I’m not saying that!  I know it’s tough, of course I do.  But I just don’t think people would inspect your life  _ that  _ closely if you didn’t have a girlfriend -- after all, we still live in a world where straightness is seen as default.  And you’re a big tough hockey player.  I doubt many people would assume that --”

“If  _ any  _ people assume it’s too many, Magnus --”

“ _Besides,_ it’s 2016!  There are gay players in other sports, right?  And you’re an amazing player, the best on your whole team -- would anyone really care that much, so long as you keep scoring goals the way you do?”

“Yeah, they would!  I know it’s wrong and I know it’s not fair, but people wouldn’t care half as much about my snapshot if they found out I was sucking dick every night.”

There’s a long pause.  And suddenly they're both just -- done.

“ _ Every _ night?  Is there someone else I should know about, Alexander?”

Alec’s still for a moment.  But then he lets out a breath, and the tension deflates from his body, and he smiles despite his own annoyance.  He knows this isn’t  _ actually  _ a fight, he knows Magnus isn’t really mad at him -- he’s just mad about the situation.  Alec understands.  It’s not like he’s happy about it either.

“I’m sorry,” Magnus offers a moment later, sighing and rolling over, pulling himself into sitting on the floor beside the couch and letting his chin rest on Alec’s knees.  Alec’s hand goes to Magnus’s hair reflexively.  “I do know it’s tough for you.  I suppose I’m just a little bit jealous.”

“I get that,” Alec assures him.  

“I probably can’t understand it because I don’t live in your sort of world.  Are things really still  _ so  _ bad?  Most of the world has slowly started inching towards being more accepting.”

Alec thinks of that for a moment.  The short answer is: yes and no.  Yes, things are still bad, but no they’re not quite as bad as they used to be.  It’s just a really, really charged time, and so much change is happening, but does Alec want to be at the forefront of all that change?  He hates attention.  All he’s ever wanted is to play hockey and blend into the background as much as he can.  He tries to think of a way to explain all the nuances of that to Magnus, but he’s not sure he’s ever going to be good at putting it into words..

“There’s this organisation called You Can Play.  I don’t know if you’ve heard of them, since you’re new to knowing anything about hockey?”  Magnus shakes his head, so Alec continues,  “It’s basically a project set up to support LGBT athletes.  It was started by a hockey player and it’s had loads of support from all the teams in the NHL.  The Blades did a video for it, a couple of years before I signed.  So -- I don’t know, on the surface, it probably all seems very open.  And people really are just waiting for the first gay player to come out, these days.”

“But?” Magnus guesses, because he’s so good at reading Alec that he knows it doesn’t end there.

“But there’s a big difference between what it looks like on the surface and what it would  _ really  _ be.  Maybe most of my teammates would be okay if I came out, but I know for a fact some wouldn’t be, and the response from fans and commentators and journalists and the media and the public in general -- it would be huge, and probably mostly negative.  There would be constant scrutiny on me, as well as anyone I dated, and some teams might be reluctant to align themselves with me in the future because of all the drama and the impact that would have.  I’ve spoken to our head of PR about it in confidence.  And all he’s ever done is advise me that if I don’t want to deal with all that, I can’t be out.”

A thoroughly unhappy expression settles on Magnus’s face, but mostly, he just looks sad.

“I’m sorry you have to deal with that, Alexander.”

“I’m sorry you kind of have to deal with it too, now you’re dating me.”  He runs a hand comfortingly over Magnus’s hair for a moment, but then something strikes him.  It’s that word --  _ dating.   _ Alec’s not really sure what the difference between dating and being in a relationship is, but dating seems far more casual somehow, and what he has with Magnus definitely isn’t very casual at this stage.  But they’ve also never said they’re  _ boyfriends  _ or anything.  There must be a strange, worried expression on his face, because Magnus is suddenly frowning up at him.

“What’s the matter, darling?” 

“It’s not -- I mean, I was just wondering, are we -- I mean, are we  _ together?”   _ Alec asks, his face hopelessly flushed as he gestures aimlessly between the two of them.  Magnus levels him with a long look, and for a rare moment it doesn’t seem like his emotions are broadcasting right out of his eyes.  Alec can’t tell what he’s thinking at all.

“Well, I suppose that depends,” Magnus says, terrifying Alec for a split second, “On you.  I would certainly like to be, but I don’t want to push.”

“No, I -- I want that too,” Alec says quickly, like he doesn’t want to leave any time for Magnus to take it back.  “I really do.  I just, I’ve never -- y’know, really done this before.  Had a proper boyfriend, I mean.”

Magnus looks a little amused.  He climbs up, knots a hand in Alec’s hair, and presses a tiny chaste kiss to the corner of his lips.  It’s somehow the most charming thing he’s ever done.

“Well, you have one now.”

\----

Magnus doesn't bring it up again after that, and he seems happy, but the conversation lingers in Alec’s brain for days.  

Not being able to come out has been a fact of his existence from the first moment Alec realised he had any kind of interest in dicks that were not his own.  Yeah, it's unfair, and he's always known it's unfair, but that has never changed the facts.  He's been in stasis since he was a teenager, simply living with the fundamental knowledge that he has to hide a large chunk of who he is if he wants to pursue the  _ other _ large chunk of who he is -- hockey. And honestly, it's become so ingrained in him that for a while he forgot to even be bothered by it.

But things are changing lately.  It's only been a month and a half since his first date with Magnus, just over two since they first met, but there's an air between them that says -- yes, it's serious already, yes, they both know this is headed somewhere.  And that simple feeling is flipping Alec’s world sideways.

Up until now, Alec has been sacrificing his own emotional freedom and self-identity to stay in the closet. But that's just it.   _ He's _ been the only one sacrificing anything. He's mostly lived on hookups his whole life and never had a proper boyfriend, certainly never had anyone he's cared about in this way as much as he cares about Magnus. But this isn't just affecting him anymore; it's affecting Magnus, who has to lie about being in a relationship to all his friends, who has a boyfriend he can't hold hands with in public or take on silly dates, who has to see pictures of Alec going on dates with a woman and know it's not real.

Coming out still doesn't feel like an option -- the terror of it is rooted so deep.  But Alec feels conflicted, which is actually something he hasn't felt for a long time.

A few mornings later, Alec leaves Magnus sleeping in his bed and goes for a run with Izzy, and while they make their way through the early-morning quiet of the park he relays all his scary and confusing thoughts to her.  Izzy often gives surprisingly good advice -- and his only other option of confidante is Jace, whose emotional range is largely eclipsed by vodka and hairgel.

“This is your first real relationship, big brother,” she tells him through measured pants of breath.  “It's natural for your life to have to change to accommodate it!  I'm just proud you’re doing this at all.”

“You’re not supposed to be proud of me, I’m older than you.  You should be the one learning all these lessons while I give you sage advice,” he jokes.  Izzy thumps him on the arm, and turns the next corner before he does.

“All I’m saying is, you don't have to come out until you're ready, but also don’t refuse to be flexible just because you have these ideas of how your life  _ has  _ to be.”  They reach a water fountain in the park and both jog to a stop, breathing heavy; Izzy leans to take a drink and Alec takes the opportunity to stretch out, looking up at the grey morning sky.  It’s completely cloudy, but somehow not grim -- the greyness is bright and pale, sending shimmering reflections off the lake.  Against all the odds, a few beams of winter sunlight are making it down to earth, and it’s beautiful.  There’s probably a metaphor in there somewhere.

Izzy starts saying something else, and Alec decides he doesn't want advice anymore.

“Race you back to the gates,” he says, and takes off before Izzy can even look up from the fountain. 

“Hey!  That's not fair, your legs are as long as my whole body!  -- Alec!”  But her voice is already fading into the distance as he pushes his body as hard as he can.  All he can think is that back at his apartment, Magnus is all curled up in bed waiting for him, and if Alec gets home soon he’ll have an hour to kill before he has to leave again with practice. 

He just wants to go home to Magnus.  The idea makes his stomach churn happily and his head feel dizzy, swirly, lighter than his thoughts.  

But if anyone asks, he's blaming all that on the running.

\----

The last three days of January, it’s all-star weekend, and every single NHL player who didn’t get picked is singing to the heavens.   _ Three whole days off _ .  Every year it seems like an even more glorious break.  The Blades get back from a roadie just before it starts, and for the next few days of practice the break seems to be all anyone can talk about.

Technically, Alec was supposed to be in the all-star game, but he begged off because of the issues he’s been having with his hip.  Even though the ‘issues he’s been having with his hip’ are nothing more serious than the occasional ache when he skates for too long as it’s had no impact at all on him playing upwards of three games a week for the last four months.  But it’ll probably be good to rest it for a weekend regardless.

Okay, he can admit it -- he just wanted a weekend off.

Jace is the only other player from the Blades who got picked, and he’s thrilled about it, but the rest of the guys seem just as thrilled to have the time off.  As they’re changing out after practice on the 26th Alec listens to everyone talking about their plans.  Brownie is taking his fiancee to see his parents in Montreal; Raj is going to lounge on a beach somewhere with his girlfriend; Luke is going to shut himself up in his apartment, turn off his phone, and clock some quality wife-and-stepdaughter time, like the boring adoring family man he is.  It all sounds like fun.

“What about you, Lighty?” one of the guys asks after the team meeting breaks up and they all start to head out.  “You and Lydia must have something good planned for the break, yeah?”

“Ski trip?  Country getaway?  Sex marathon?” Brownie suggests, and a few guys laugh.  Alec just grins back.  He can’t really bring himself to be annoyed.

“Yeah,” he says, without agreeing to anything specific.  “I have plans.”

\-----

Later, Alec turns up at Magnus’s door and says, “I want you to fuck me.”

Magnus looks delighted.

“Well, that’s a much more interesting greeting than  _ hello _ .  Can I ask what’s brought this on?”

He ushers Alec into his apartment, happily helping Alec shed his coat, and then firmly kisses him hello for a second.  When they pull apart, Alec’s almost forgotten what he was saying.

“Uhm,” he says, taking a moment to get his senses back.  “I just -- want you to.  I’ve wanted it for ages, but, it’s just, it’s been -- a while, for me, like a  _ long  _ while, and I didn’t wanna do it when I had practice the next day in case I was -- sore, and it threw off my skating?”

It sounds a little ridiculous when he says it like that, but Alec is seriously scared of anything getting in the way of his performance on the ice, and there would particularly be no way to explain away  _ I can’t quite skate right cus my ass hurts from all the gay sex I had last night.   _ So he’s put it off -- and it’s not like either of them have been  _ unhappy  _ with their sex life, far from it, so it hasn’t been a problem.  Alec loves fucking Magnus, and Magnus definitely loves it too, and they do plenty of other stuff besides.

Still.  It feels more than a little ridiculous, having to schedule their sex life this way, but that doesn't stop Alec from being excited.  He's loved every time he's gotten to fuck Magnus, but variety makes the world go round, and sometimes Alec wakes in his a strange hotel room bed with a gasp, his cock hard and his pulse racing, just cus he's been dreaming about what it’d be like to have Magnus inside him.  Alec hasn’t bottomed for a long time, but when he has in the past, he’s always loved it.  A  _ lot _ .  And the thought of doing that with Magnus is so exciting it almost hurts.

They eat dinner first, and talk, and mess around on the couch for a while before Magnus finally takes him to bed.  

It’s just as good as Alec knew it would be.  They tumble onto Magnus’s bed in a heap of passion, awkwardly shed out of their clothes as fast as they can, and then Magnus works him open slowly, teasing him for what feels like hours, trying to make sure Alec’s as prepared as he can possibly be.  When he finally pushes inside, Alec nearly sobs.

Magnus fucks him slow and deep and for a really, really long time, and the both of them are shaking by the time it’s over.  They collapse into each other’s arms and trade slow kisses for a while more, Alec sprawled on top of Magnus, while they get their breath back.  There’s something terrifying going on inside him.  He’s still shaking a little, and he doesn’t think it’s just from the sex.

He’s never felt this before.  This fragile, tender creature inside of him that rears up every time he thinks of Magnus, affection so raw that it’s nearly pain.  He doesn’t know how to be vulnerable this way, but he does know without a doubt that Magnus could  _ crush  _ him if he wanted to.

Alec really, really hopes that Magnus never wants to.  As they curl up under the cooling sheets and kiss each other into sleep, that’s all he can think.   
  
He’ll do anything to keep this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope you enjoyed! leave a comment if you wanna make the happiest gal on earth ♥︎
> 
> up next time: VALENTINE'S DAY! (and some actual hockey)
> 
> [my tumblr!](http://milominderbindered.tumblr.com)


	5. Chapter Five: February

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my computer is being a BUTTHOLE so it needs to go to the butthole correction store where they will fiddle around with its wires and take all the butthole molecules out of it; cus of this it might take me a couple extra days to get the next chapter out, and i'm super sorry!! 
> 
> (also i lied bout there being actual hockey in this chap, i forgot that got shuffled to the next one, but meh more of u guys prolly care about the fluffy smushing anyway)
> 
> if you wanna skip the explicit bitz, stop around "I think you should take me to bed now, Alexander" and start again at "They clean up and entwine themselves under the duvet" !!

Jace spends the whole first week of February bragging about the all-star weekend.  It would be annoying, but he’s seriously bringing his A-game afterwards, as if he soaked up extra talent just from being around all those other amazing athletes, and the Blades win their next three games.  They only lose the fourth to the Sharks in OT, so everyone else is feeling in a bit of a bragging mood too.  Even Alec, who is usually reluctant to jinx these things even in his own mind, can admit that they’re looking pretty well on track to a spot in the playoffs.

They have a long stretch of away games in the second week of February, and he misses Magnus a lot.  They skype when they can and Magnus insists he doesn’t mind -- he seems to be posting Instagram photos from fabulous new locations and events every day, from concerts in the park to parties with his friends to shopping sprees to find inventory for his store.  So he seems fine, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck when they’re apart.  Alec’s never had a boyfriend to worry about missing before -- and before Alec knows it, Valentine’s Day is coming up.  Another thing he’s never had cause to think about before Magnus came along.  On February 13th they have an away game, and on February 15th they have a home game, and on February 14th, Alec goes to see Magnus.

Not for the whole day, of course.  Alec doesn’t have days off in the season -- nobody on the team does unless they’re out with some kind of deathly injury.  He’s at the rink by nine in the morning to see the trainers, and they have practice from ten until noon, and after that he and Jace and Brownie are booked in to go to the children’s ward at the hospital.

All the players have to do this kind of charity stuff and public appearances, and it’s usually okay, but Alec’s awkward with kids.  Jace and Brownie delight them, even the ones who don’t care about hockey at all, handing out paper Valentine’s hearts and signing things and running around wearing bedsheet capes.  Alec doesn’t know how they have the energy to do all that at this point in the season, honestly, and he’s happier just hanging back.  One girl gives him a big heart shaped chocolate and announces that she’s going to marry him when she grows up.

Alec isn’t supposed to eat chocolate on his diet plan, and he has no intention of ever marrying either a girl or someone fifteen years younger than him, but he manages to smile at her and keep both those thoughts to himself until they leave.

He goes home to change first, and then he heads straight to Magnus’s.  It’s not a long walk between their apartments, so even though he’s tired he doesn’t get a cab, just bundles up and trudges through the thawing snow.  As he walks, he thinks.

He’s nervous.  Which is ridiculous, Magnus is his boyfriend and has been for a month now, but somehow it still just seems shockingly new and fragile to Alec.  They haven’t seen each other for a week and whenever they do get a chance, it’s not for long, because of Alec’s crazy schedule.  Magnus claims not to mind, says that he has his own busy life to be getting on with and just enjoys their texts and skype dates and whatever time they do get together, but it’s still so easy for Alec to worry.  He’s having enough trouble believing that he’s good enough for Magnus already.

Plus, it’s Valentine’s day.  Alec has never in his life had a date on Valentine’s day before.  Alec’s certainly never had a  _ boyfriend  _ on Valentine’s day before, and he doesn’t know what the rules are.  When Magnus invited him over for dinner he said it would be takeout, totally casual, nothing special because of the day, and Alec didn’t need to bring anything.

Alec feels like he should bring something.  Magnus would probably love an extravagant gift or something, but given that Alec is already late and also incredibly terrible at choosing gifts for anyone, it’s a bit too late to think of that.

A block away from Magnus’s apartment, he stops and buys flowers.  An over-the-top bunch of multicoloured roses that he only chooses because they’re the biggest thing in the store.  He feels incredibly dumb carrying them as soon as he gets back onto the street, but also slightly better that at least his hands aren’t empty.  That at least he has  _ something _ to offer.

\-----

Magnus loves the flowers.  He puts them right in the middle of the living room, on the coffee table, where they completely obscure the view of the TV, but then Magnus never really seems to watch that anyway.  And as soon as he’s done that he loops his arms around Alec’s neck and kisses him wetly for several long and blissful minutes.

When they break apart, Alec reaches into his pocket, and pulls out his second gift.

“A little girl in the hospital gave this to me,” he says, pressing the heart shaped chocolate into Magnus’s hand.  “But I’m not supposed to eat chocolate.  Happy Valentine’s day.”

He almost says something about how she’d wanted to marry him, but it feels like starting up a conversation about marriage with the guy he’s been dating for barely a month seems a little much.  So Alec just shuts his mouth after that.  But Magnus looks up at him, eyes bright in a way that has nothing to do with the glitter he’s lined them with, and smiles a soft and almost disbelieving smile.  He looks even happier than he had about the flowers.  Then he kisses Alec again, somehow both harder and softer than the moment before, and Alec nearly melts against him.

They fall to the couch, and for a few long minutes they get distracted by each other, all tangled up and breathless, laughing a little, Magnus crawling on top of Alec, his body warm and lovely.  His outfit doesn’t have any sharp or awkward bits to poke Alec with today; he’s actually not dressed up, or at least not for him.  The Magnus equivalent of sweats is soft purple pants and a silky blue shirt that’s unbuttoned enough to show most of his chest, dazzling makeup but no jewellery except his earrings, bare feet.  He tucks his toes under Alec’s calves and Alec feels so ridiculously charmed that it’s like hot water is spilling all through his chest.

“If I’d known you were going to go all adorably romantic, Alexander, I would have gotten you a present too,” Magnus admits into Alec’s lips, ruffling Alec’s hair as he does.  Alec grins up at him.

“I don’t need anything.  Just being with you is nice.”  He could have said a lot of much more sappy things there, he’s certainly thinking enough of them, but he refrains.  Magnus kisses him again, and for a while, they almost forget about dinner.

\-----

They do have to eat eventually, and true to his word Magnus has ordered takeout.  Chinese food really isn’t on Alec’s approved meals either, but he doesn’t have the heart to tell Magnus that, and he knows he follows the rules more strictly than most of the guys anyway.  It won’t kill him to cheat just this once.  
  
_ There’s _ something he never would have thought before Magnus.  But Magnus just makes it so much easier to relax about these things, somehow.  Alec stretches out on the couch and watches Magnus talk with his hands, chopsticks gesturing wildly as he describes the antics of a hopeless new employee at his store.

They both know what’s gonna happen when they finish eating, but it doesn’t make it any less exciting.  Somehow as soon as Alec finishes crunching the last fortune cookie (“Land is always on the mind of a flying bird”) the air in the room changes, something becoming just a little tenser, a little more electric.  It seems almost like the lights have suddenly dimmed, though that can’t be true.  When Alec looks over at Magnus he looks enchanting, as always, but there’s something just a little wicked in his glitter-ringed eyes.  
  
They’ve had sex a lot by now, almost every time they’ve seen each other since the first time back in December, but not enough that Alec’s lost count, and not enough that he really knows what to expect when Magnus crawls on top of him on the couch.  Alec’s breath hitches when Magnus sits down hard in his lap, straddling him, and then their lips are sliding together and everything is just pure heat and addictive, tingling sensations.

“I think you should take me to bed now, Alexander,” Magnus tells him, leaning back after a few minutes with an effortlessly seductive grin.

“Uh.”  For a moment Alec feels incredibly dumb, almost star-struck, with no idea how to speak.  “That -- I, yeah, that sounds --” he manages to stammer out before Magnus laughs, wrapping his legs tighter around Alec’s waist.

“Up,” Magnus instructs, and kisses him again.  Alec doesn’t need to be told again.  He clutches his arms around Magnus, one around his back and one under his thigh, holding Magnus’s warm, teasing body as close to him as possible, and walks them both into the bedroom like that.  Magnus keeps kissing his lips and nipping at his jaw and shifting restlessly against Alec, and Alec’s dick is already starting to get too interested, his breath coming out just a little heavier.  For a minute he feels like he has more energy than he has since the season began, just from how frantically he finds himself wanting Magnus.

He drops Magnus down onto the bed a little too roughly when they finally make it there, but Magnus doesn’t seem to mind, letting out a little sinful moan and stretching his body back against the red silk sheets, arms thrown up behind his head.  Alec is torn between leaping on top of him or just standing there and looking forever.  Magnus, fully clothed and barely moving, is more erotic than any porn Alec has ever seen.

Alec tugs his t-shirt off and throws it across the room before he crawls onto the bed, grabbing Magnus’s face to kiss him hard again.  He loses himself in that for a while, the hurried and electrically passionate way Magnus is kissing him, the taste of Magnus’s tongue and the feel of his nipping teeth.  But he wants too much of everything else to let it keep him there for long.  Alec sits back hard on Magnus’s hips, starts fumbling with the remaining buttons of Magnus’s half-undone shirt.

It’s a thankful and somehow impossible thing, but Magnus is just as impatient for this as Alec is.  After only a few moments he pushes himself up and just tears his shirt over his head, buttons still done up, and then rakes his nails down Alec’s chest, catching on his nipples, making Alec gasp and restlessly shift their hips together.  They kiss again, can’t ever seem to stop kissing when they’re in bed together, a wet and messy kiss this time that makes Alec flush with heat all down his chest.  After a few fumbling minutes he pushes Magnus hard back down against the bed again, pins Magnus’s arms up above his head, just to hear the delicious way Magnus groans.

“What do you want to do?” Alec asks, his voice coming out lower and more gravelly than he expects.  He sounds as wrecked as he already feels.  Magnus  _ hmms  _ at him for a second, thinking even as he squirms against the bed, and then all of a sudden he’s wrenching his hands free and rolling the both of them over, pinning Alec down instead and straddling Alec’s hips. His ass is pressing down onto Alec’s aching erection, and even through his pants and Alec’s thick jeans, the sensation is so good that Alec throws his head back for a moment, stomach tensing.

“You’re tired,” Magnus says.  Alec doesn’t actually feel tired right at that moment, but he knows it’s objectively true; it’s probably why he feels just a little more sensitive than usual, why he’s so desperate for Magnus now, and why there’s a thick heavy feeling in all of his limbs that is only making the way Magnus is rolling his hips more unbearably intense.  Then Magnus leans down, hands either side of Alec’s head, and says lowly and right into his ear, “Just lie there and let me ride you until you come so hard you forget your own name.”

Alec feels about three seconds away from coming right then.  He lets out a choked sound, and another one when Magnus bites at the muscles of his neck, and then they’re both fumbling with each other’s pants, adjusting their positions until they’re both naked and Alec can admire Magnus’s beautiful hard cock as much as he wants.

Magnus rolls away for just a second to grab lube and condoms from the bedside table, and the loss of contact feels like centuries to Alec, who can’t decide between watching the beautiful lines of Magnus’s bare back or trying to jerk his dick a couple of times to get even a tiny bit of the contact he’s so frantic for.  He ends up doing neither, just shutting his eyes and taking a few deep breaths.

Then Magnus is back on top of him, and Alec wrenches his eyes open again, though it feels a little harder all of a sudden.  He really is tired, but he wants this more than he could ever want sleep.  He reaches for the lube, but Magnus slaps his hands away and slicks up his own fingers instead.

“I thought I told you to just lie there?” Magnus says, and starts opening himself up.  Sat on top of Alec’s thighs with his arm stretched and his fingers up his ass, Magnus looks like a dream.  A dream or a nightmare, Alec can’t decide, but either way it’s sending hopeless waves of burning heat through Alec’s body.  He wants to take a photo of this image and get it tattooed on the back of his eyelids.  He can tell the exact moment Magnus touches his prostate, because his back arches away and his hips tilt forwards in a sudden wave of motion, thighs tensing up.

Alec really does reach for his dick then, but doesn’t jerk off, just squeezes the base a little to try and cool off.  Magnus laughs a little when he notices, though he doesn’t seem in much better condition, already gasping and bouncing on his fingers.  It’s a few more minutes before Magnus finally pulls away, uncaringly wiping his fingers off on his silk sheets and then reaching for a condom.

Alec must still be so obviously on edge, because Magnus doesn’t tease him like he sometimes does, just rolls on the condom and some lube and then is finally, blessedly, pushing down onto Alec.

Alec can’t breathe when Magnus takes in the head of his dick, oh so slowly.  He feels impossibly tight, like always, and Alec can’t believe how good it is, the warmth and the friction as Magnus slowly sinks down onto him, hands pinning Alec’s hips to the bed.  Alec just wants to move, to thrust up into Magnus’s body, but he forces himself to lay there, still and holding his breath and flushing with impossible bursts of heat all over his body.

As soon as he starts to move, Alec knows he’s done for.  Magnus rides him in tiny fast movements, rolling his hips and bouncing without raising up off Alec very far, and every motion he makes has Alec gasping.  Alec lets his eyes fall shut and grips at Magnus’s hips so hard it has to hurt, everything somehow so much more intense when he can’t see, has nothing to focus on but the sensations attacking his dick and shuddering through his whole body.

Alec’s felt on the brink for so long that it almost takes him by surprise when he actually gets there.  His toes curl and the warmth in him rises slowly, but then all of a sudden it’s like every sensation in the world is slamming down onto his dick and Alec’s whole body tenses up, spine arching off the mattress, and he barely has time to shout, “M-Magnus!” before he’s coming, hips thrusting up in a frenzy, fingers ragging Magnus’s hips down onto him, gasping and moving as Magnus says something in his beautiful voice that Alec barely hears, clenches down around Alec, and Alec’s still coming so hard, and the whole world for a moment is contained in his dick and the impossible explosive endless pleasure flying through his whole body as he empties into Magnus’s ass.

It’s probably one of the best orgasms of Alec’s life, and it takes him a minute to come down from it.  When he finally opens his eyes again, he lets out a huge breath at the same time, and it feels like his whole body’s melting into the bed.  

Magnus gently climbs off his dick and pulls off the condom, tying it and leaning off the bed to throw it in the waste paper basket by the bedside table.  He does all that and then comes back up to sit by Alec, and only then does Alec remember that Magnus is still hard.  His cock is arching up towards his stomach, flushed dark red and gorgeous as always, and Alec feels an almost physical need to touch him, even through the waves of his own satisfaction and exhaustion.

“C’mon, I’ll blow you,” he says, moving to try and switch their positions, but Magnus just pushes him back to the bed with one hand.

“I thought I told you to just lie there and let me do the work?”  Magnus is jerking his own dick and it makes Alec almost jealous -- jealous of Magnus himself, which is ridiculous and makes no sense, but he wants to be the one doing that, damnit.

“Then come up  _ here _ ,” Alec says, knowing his voice is a little hazy with tiredness but hoping that the waving of his hand will illustrate his point.  Magnus hesitates for a moment, but seems to get it, and comes up to straddle Alec’s chest.

Alec finally gets a hand around Magnus’s dick, hot and rock hard with precome dripping from the tip.  He jerks him a few times and Magnus groans, running his hands through his own hair and tugging at it, eyes gazing down at Alec heavy-lidded.  His hips are squirming, past the point of desperate by now, and Alec grips harder, moves his wrist faster, working Magnus’s cock in and out of the foreskin while Magnus gasps above him.  It’s not a good angle for a blowjob but Alec gets his lips around the head of Magnus’s cock, sucking on it hard and pushing his tongue into the slit in a way that makes Magnus’s hips stutter into his hand.  He keeps going like that, licking at what he can reach of Magnus’s dick and using his hand on the rest, bringing his other hand up to roll Magnus’s balls between his fingers, and it barely takes a few minutes of that to get Magnus to the edge.

“Ah,  _ Alexander,”  _ Magnus groans, in a voice that barely sounds like his own, and then a moment later his whole body is tensing above Alec and he throws his head back and jerks his hips forwards and he’s coming, frantically thrusting into Alec’s hand for the last few seconds, half of his come landing inside Alec’s mouth and half on his lips, dripping down his chin.

When Magnus stops coming, he sits up above Alec for another long moment, panting, before letting out a sound that’s almost like a giddy laugh and collapsing over beside Alec on the bed.  Alec licks his lips and then swallows, and Magnus leans over and kisses him

They clean up and entwine themselves under the duvet and by the time their harsh breaths fade back to normal, any sense of urgency either of them had is long faded, giving in to a mood that’s overwhelmingly sweet and calm.  The tiredness he’s been barely holding at bay hits Alec all at once, and he could almost pass out right then, but instead he hovers in the space between waking and sleeping, his head propped on Magnus’s chest.  He can hear Magnus’s heartbeat if they’re quiet enough.  Then Magnus starts running his hand through Alec’s messy hair.

“Sometimes I think I met you at the worst time possible,” Alec murmurs, and feels brave enough, partly from sleep and partly from the intimacy that comes with being quiet in the dark, to say things it seems too soon to say.  “I just want to do this every night.  I want to see you all the time and take you on dates and learn everything there is to know about you all at once.  And instead I’m gone half the time and exhausted when I do see you.”

Magnus makes a little huffing laugh sound, not like he thinks Alec’s being silly or anything, just a laugh.  It’s a warm sound that’s nice to hear.

“You worry too much, darling,” he tells Alec.  His hand grips Alec’s hair a little harder, working a knot out of one of his loose curls.  “We talk every single day, and if my impressive streak of texting is doing its job, you’re learning plenty about me.  And I see you at least once a week.  That’s not much less than most new couples.”

Alec wouldn’t know -- he’s never been part of a new couple before.  He wonders if it’s normal to feel the way he does so quickly, like he’d be happy to move Magnus into his apartment already, like he could be shut up in a room with Magnus for eternity and never get tired of it.  Alec spent so long repressing every single thing he felt that sometimes he suspects his emotions always come out a little too strongly, now, even though he still does his best to hide it.  
  
“I guess,” he says to Magnus, not feeling much better.

“And it won’t be for much longer.  Only a few months until you’ll be in off-season for the summer, right?”

Hockey terms still always sound a little awkward coming out of Magnus’s mouth, and it’s ridiculously endearing.  Alec’s also not sure Magnus has realised that he’ll still have stuff to do in the off-season.  It’s not like training just  _ stops.   _ But he supposes that the other guys on the team, all those with wives or girlfriends or even kids, must find the most time to be with their families then.  So it must be possible.  

“Yeah.  It just sucks that right now, I can’t even think about prioritising anything other than hockey.”

“ _ Well _ \--”  Magnus shuffles down a little further and drops a kiss onto the top of Alec’s head, chastely affectionate in a way that makes warmth bloom in Alec’s stomach.  “-- I wouldn’t say that about your priorities.  I mean, it’s not convenient for you to be here with me now, is it?”

Alec thinks about how tired he is and how early he has to wake up tomorrow to see the trainers and do pre-game interviews and morning skate, and thinks, actually, no, it’s not convenient for him at all.  But he hadn’t really noticed that at all until Magnus just said it.

Alec smiles into Magnus’s chest.  Maybe he’s learning how to do this boyfriend thing okay after all.

“Happy Valentine’s day,” he mutters, kissing Magnus’s chest, right over his heart.  He can feel himself drifting off, but for once, he’s not thinking of shootouts and line changes and shots-on-goal as he falls asleep.

“Happy Valentine’s day, Alexander,” Magnus whispers back, and it follows Alec right into his dreams.

\-----

After that night, Alec feels like he couldn’t stop his feelings towards Magnus getting more intense if he tried.  And he doesn’t really want to try.  For the rest of the month, every text Magnus sends, every time they say goodnight to each other on Skype while Alec’s stuck in an unfamiliar hotel room, every night they actually get to spend curled up together -- all of it is snowballing into some huge and unfamiliar, but not unwelcome.

He’s starting to think about Magnus almost as much as he thinks about hockey, but somehow, it’s only helping his game.  Alec scores more points than any other D-man in the league in February.  When Magnus finds out about that he calls Alec in San Jose to congratulate him.

“You’re an excellent  _ D _ -man,” Magnus says, absolutely wickedly.  “I could have told them that months ago.  My D has thoroughly appreciated your many skills.”  
  
Alec, shut up in a restaurant bathroom so the team won’t hear who he’s talking to, laughs so hard that he almost cries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you liked it!! as always leave a comment with your thoughts if you wanna make me the happiest gal in the land
> 
> hopefully the next chap will be up tomorrow but no promises if my computer doesn't get fixed before i go away for the weekend :// but as soon as laptop comes home the last four chaps will be posted and this'll be finished and all will be good! lotsa love
> 
> [my tumblr!](http://milominderbindered.tumblr.com)


	6. Chapter Six: March

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am so ridiculously sorry for the wait. i mentioned my computer troubles in the notes of the last chap, but that has culminated in me losing a bunch of files from the last month, including the one that had the remaining chapters of this story in it. there was a period where i thought i'd be able to recover them so i was waiting for that, but then it turned out to be impossible, so i had a little of this chap in googledocs but i pretty much had to rewrite the whole thing. i'm still not as happy with it as i was with the first version, but i really just wanted to get something published so you guys don't think i have abandoned the story!
> 
> this certainly puts a spanner in my plan to post a chapter every day, but i'm gonna try and write rlly fast over the next few days and post a chap every other day instead. there are only three more to go after this -- hopefully this story will be complete by thursday. thanks everyone for putting up with my terribleness and i really hope u enjoy this installment!!

March starts with a string of home games, and the Blades are kind of on fire.  Luke gets two shutouts in three games, and Brownie is winning every face-off they put him in, and for the first time in his career Alec becomes the most point-scoring defenseman of the current season.  

It feels pretty good.  Almost as good as the fact that after most of his games, he comes home to find Magnus already curled up in his bed.

Their fourth home game is on the eighth, and it’s a tough one, every point being taken by tooth-and-nail, stretching into double OT before the Blades finally manage to secure the winning point.  They’re all exhausted and aching to their bones by the time they stumble off the ice, but there’s still the usual sightly giddy vibe that comes with a late-season win.  The kind of win that they know is gonna be taking them to the playoffs.

“Good game,” Coach says to them all in the locker room, which is honestly rare praise from him.  He claps Brownie on the shoulder, and then looks across the room and says, “Lightwood, I want you doing press today.  It’s been too long since you had a shift, they’re hounding us to see that pretty face again.”

Alec groans, letting his body slump against his locker, but he can’t exactly complain -- it’s part of his job.  He just hopes they don’t ask anything about his love life.  He feels like he’s getting worse and worse at lying, these days.  It seems to directly correlate with how he’s getting happier.

\-----

They do ask about his love life.  Of course they do.  All the standard questions about the game come first of course, which he and Brownie answer in the usual soundbite monotone, but nobody seems quite content to just leave it there.  Alec and Lydia are somehow becoming renowned as the sweethearts of hockey; they are, god forbid, a _power couple_.  Luckily none of the reporters ask anything too difficult this time; he gets a question about whether he supports her charity work, to which the answer is of course yes, and about if they find it hard to make things work with their extremely busy schedules, to which he replies that they are happy to see each other when they can and talk on the phone when they can’t.  Which is true.  Alec’s struggling to remember if they’ve ever actually announced that he and Lydia are an official couple, but everyone seems to be pretty certain about it these days regardless.

As soon as he gets done with press and starts to head back into the locker room to gather up his stuff, he texts Magnus.  Magnus watches most of Alec’s games at home or at least follows their progress on the NHL app while he does other things, but he doesn’t usually watch the press, except for occasionally looking it up on YouTube to tease Alec about how many times he can say the same lines about tough games and giving it their all and everything being a team effort.  But still, after the conversation they had a couple of months ago now about Lydia, Alec’s been trying to keep Magnus much more in the loop about all the media surrounding their relationship.

When he turns on his phone, there’s the usual _well done on the win!_ texts from Izzy, Magnus, Lydia.  If they’d lost he knows the three of them would have sent him practically matching _sorry for the loss, but it was a great game!_ messages instead -- Izzy's containing a few more swear words and Magnus's a lot more flirtatious promises to make him feel better.  But today they won.  So today he skips over Izzy and Lydia’s, sure they won’t mind if he replies to them a bit later, and instead clicks on Magnus’s name.

_thanks. just got out of press, usual questions about game & lydia, etc. heading out soon.  r u @ ur place tonight? _

Magnus’s reply comes a little while later, while Alec is saying goodbye to the rest of the guys outside the stadium.

_Yep.  Come over!  I’ll keep a space warm in bed for you ;)_

The text is swiftly followed by a new snapchat notification.  Alec opens it with his phone angled towards the wall so none of the other guys who are still there will see it; this turns out to be wise.  In the picture Magnus is naked from the waist up, curled in his bed, smirking and kind of looking like sex incarnate.  

Alec is exhausted, but he’s never too tired for Magnus.  He drags his aching body into his car and types out, _be there soon._ If the alternative is going home alone to his empty apartment and missing Magnus all night long, the extra driving time is definitely worth it.

\-----

In the middle of March they go away for two games, come home for one, and then go away for another three straight away, so Alec winds up away from Magnus for more than a week.  It’s hard to live off texts and snapchats when he knows exactly how nice it is to come home to a warm sweet boyfriend at the end of a game, and he finds himself missing odd things, like the feeling of cooking breakfast for someone else, or coming back from morning practice and being pulled straight back into bed by someone who rarely gets up before noon.  It’s hard for them to even Skype much; luckily Jace is still always Alec’s roomie and he more than once offers to make himself scarce from the room for an hour if Alec wants to call Magnus, but it’s still not enough to feel like they’ve really _seen_ each other.

If there’s a consolation, it’s that the Blades win four out of their five away games.  But Alec still finds it hard to get excited by individual wins, and he’s only pleased when they finally arrive back in New York for a whole week.  He drops his bag back at his apartment, but they don’t have anything until morning skate the next day, so after that he gives in and immediately takes himself to Magnus.

It’s one of the rare occasions where Magnus is actually working at his store.  He’s dealing with a customer when Alec walks in, and he doesn’t stop or say anything when he glances over to Alec’s face, but he does seem considerably perkier and also more insistent as he sells the woman a furry pink coat.  Alec pretends to browse through racks of clothes for a few minutes, until she finally pays for her purchase and is ushered out of the store.

As soon as she’s gone, Magnus flips the sign on the door to _back in five minutes,_ and drags Alec into the back room.  He pushes Alec up against the door and kisses him thoroughly, passionately, happily.

It’s one of the best kisses of Alec’s life.

When they pull back a minute later, both a little flushed and out of breath, Alec asks, “Miss me?”

Magnus rolls his eyes, slaps Alec’s chest lightly.

“What kind of question is that?” he admonishes.  “I haven’t had sex _or_ breakfast in bed for over a week, Alexander!”

Alec laughs, wrapping his arms around Magnus’s waist.

“Nice to know what I’m good for.”

“Mmm, well, I don’t want you getting a big head or anything.  Now you know why I’m sticking around.”

“Well,” says Alec, kissing Magnus again.  “So long as you _are_ sticking around, I guess that’s good enough for me.”

\-----

Magnus ends up closing the store a little early and abandoning inventory for his employees to do the next morning, so he and Alec are in bed before they even manage to have dinner.  They take their time with sex, both feeling like they’ve been apart for much longer than a week; Alec wonders if he should worry about how co-dependant he is becoming with Magnus, how hard he now finds it to be without him even for a few days, but he can’t bring himself to care too much.  It’s making him too happy.

When they’re done, they stay in bed, and talk.  Magnus mentions a few little stories from his week that he hadn’t relayed to Alec over the phone, and Alec moans about having to go to dinner with his parents the next week for his dad’s birthday, and it all feels so relaxed and domestic that Alec’s heart is settling into a honey-sweet kind of slowness in his chest.  It feels like they’re doing to be doing this forever.

“Alexander, I have to admit something,” Magnus says after a few minutes.  He sounds serious and Alec’s breath catches in his throat for a moment, worried -- until he realises Magnus is grinning as he says it, and he rolls over, rests his chin on Alec’s chest and looks up at him with sparking eyes.  “I can't ice skate.  I've never even been to an ice rink in my whole life.”

Alec shoves Magnus off him, laughing as Magnus falls back into the cushions with a giggle, and thinks _how am I in love with someone who’s never even been on skates_.

Then he freezes, and thinks -- _love_?

"I've kept it from you because I didn't want it to end our budding relationship, but I feel like we're at the stage now where we can be honest about these things," Magnus carries on, even though his laughter, and Alec laughs too a bit as his brain spins a hundred miles an hour in realisations.

“I could teach you to skate,” he says idly, and then rolls over on top of Magnus and grabs at his face and kisses him and says, “I love you,” because he doesn't see any point in keeping it inside.

Magnus immediately stops laughing into the kiss and tenses under Alec’s body.  Alec doesn't roll off him, but he props himself up on his elbows to put some distance between their faces, watching Magnus’s weirdly blank expression.

“Oh,” Magnus says, voice quiet.  "Do you?"

“Yeah.  I just realised.  I've never been in love before, but I love you.”

There's a long pause where they just look into each other's eyes, and Alec can't quite figure out what the expression on Magnus’s face means.  Is he uncomfortable with that?  Alec knows it’s probably relatively soon to say it, but they've been in a relationship for a few months now and he hates lying about his feelings if he can help it, doesn’t see the point in holding anything back when Magnus knowing him is the whole _point_ of this, the whole point of what being in love should surely entail.

“But -- how do you know?”

Alec has to think about that for a moment.  He feels it -- isn’t that enough of an answer?  From the way Magnus is looking at him, it’s not, so Alec tries for his words.

“I guess because of the way you make me feel.  I don't know how to describe it.  Just -- hockey used to be the only thing I cared about but you don't even know what a puck is, and I still always want to talk to you more than I want to talk to anyone else in the world.”

“I know what a puck is. I just got rightly confused when you called it a _biscuit_.”

Magnus sounds vaguely indignant but Alec ignores him, reaching up to run a gentle hand through Magnus’s hair, watching as his fingers disappear into it.

“You're exciting but grounded, and you make me feel calm.  I know it's only been four months, but you already feel like home to me.  When I go on a roadie I want to get back to you instead of just wanting to get back to my apartment.  And I want things with you I never even knew I was supposed to want -- a life outside my job, to start with.” He leans down again and drops a quick, simple kiss onto Magnus’s lips.  “So I guess all that is how I know I love you.  I'm sorry it's not a lot of big things.  But the way I feel is really, really big.”

They're close enough that Alec can hear Magnus taking in a deep, shuddering breath.

“You're astounding,” Magnus whispers.  “You really are.  I've let you get closer to me than I've let anyone for years now.  And all that stuff -- I feel all that too.  I just don't know if I can say it back right now.”

Alec blinks.

“That's okay,” he says quickly.  Is that why Magnus has been looking so unsure?  Alec doesn't need it said back right away, of course he doesn't, that's not why he said it.

“It's just that there's some stuff with my past that I should probably tell you, darling.”

“You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to, Magnus.  I get it.  I don't mind.”

“No, I _want_ you to know.  It's just hard, I've never told anyone except Catarina.”  He takes another deep breath, tightens his arms around Alec but looks away.  “To put it simply, I had my heart broken.  Or more like ripped out, torn to shreds and set alight.  I won't get into all the gritty details, but -- you know I went into foster care when I was ten?”

“Yeah.”  They’ve talked about that before, but not in depth.  Alec keeps running his fingers through Magnus’s hair and waits for the story.

“There was this girl my age in my first group home, Camille.  For years we bounced around the same foster homes, and by the time we were teenagers we were permanently based in the same group home, and I had fallen in love with her.  She was the only person who’d ever been constant in my life, and for a kid like me, who'd be abandoned by everyone I’d ever had a connection with, that was a big deal.  And we were both very troubled kids, but as we grew up I started to find myself and heal all that.  She didn't.”

Magnus sighs, and rolls over, propping himself up on his elbows but still avoiding Alec’s gaze.  “She got meaner and more troubled and into some bad stuff, and she said she loved me but she would never listen to me or let me help her, and for a few years things were awful.  I always figured we’d be one of those stories of true love that you read about, though.  A few years of on-and-off drama but eventually she’d get help and we’d end up together.” He finally looks back at Alec, and it stops Alec’s breath for a second, how beautiful Magnus’s big brown eyes can look when they're mourning.  “That's not what happened, obviously.  When we were twenty I found out she'd been cheating on me for years.  She said a lot of things about how she never really loved me, about how nobody ever would.  It devastated me, Alexander.  It was months before I could even manage to get out of bed every day.  And I know you're not Camille, I promise I do and you'd never mean to hurt me like that, but there's so much at stake with your job and you having to stay in the closet and _everything_.  And I don't think I could bear it if I fell for you and you hurt me like that's, Alec.  I really don't think I'd be okay.”

In feels like there is suddenly extra space flooding into the room around them just to hold the weight of Magnus's words.  Alec feels a lot of things in the wake of it; pain for all the pain Magnus himself has gone through, and also an amount of pleasure at the fact that Alec, who could so easily have become another passer-by in Magnus’s life, has become someone important enough to have these things confessed to him.  Mostly, he just feels overwhelmed with how much love there is within him.  It’s not like Alec really ever thought he was _incapable_ of love, but he certainly never knew he had a love within him like this.

“Magnus,” Alec says.  Magnus is still looking at him, big sad eyes, and he looks almost hesitant; there’s fear rippling out of him after his story.  Alec leans over and kisses Magnus’s shoulder.  “Magnus, I’m really sorry you’re still hurting from what she did to you.  But I promise you, it’s _okay_.  I don’t need you to say the words right now; I don’t really care if you don’t say them ever.  It’s just that I’m the happiest in my life that I’ve ever been right now.  So long as that doesn’t go away, I don’t mind about the rest of it.”

“I certainly hope that’s not going away,” Magnus promises.  He shifts yet again, this time to rest one of his hands right over Alec’s heart.  “I don’t want to break up or anything, of course I don’t.  I just -- wanted you to know.  Why I’m a little bit broken.”

“I still think you’re less broken than I am,” Alec admits, and Magnus kisses him.

It feels like it would be the time to fall asleep together after that, curled up in each other’s arms and the silent kind of trust that has seeped into the air around them.  But it’s still only the evening, and they haven’t eaten dinner yet. So instead they drag themselves out of bed and put on a rudimentary amount of clothes and Alec makes them stir fry.  
  
It’s a quiet kind of night.  The seriousness seeps away and they both become happy again, but it feels like their quota of words for the evening has been run down, and they are mostly content to lightly touch, look with gentle eyes.

They eat by the window, looking out over the city as the sun sets and the stars begin to rise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!! comments mean the world to me, and i will try to have the next chapter up on sunday ^_^ the playoffs are coming soon! actual hockey! fun!
> 
> you can come talk to me at [my tumblr](http://milominderbindered.tumblr.com)!


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